(Escaping the Valley Fire. Central Valley resident flees unprecedented and dangerous climate change spurred fires late Sunday night. Human forced warming is making these fires more common — creating a very dangerous situation for the US West.)

Now, as of early morning on Tuesday, nearly 150,000 acres of wildfires in Central California have destroyed more than 700 homes and over 1,200 structures, endangered more than 9,000 more, resulted in the calling up of an army of 2,000 firefighters (For this region alone. Across the US West more than 18,000 firefighters are battling blazes), killed at least one person, and forced more than 23,000 to flee (see more here). It’s an egregious human toll. One in which more and more people are saying heart-wrenching words like these — “We have nothing.”

(Climate change refugees in the USA. Thousands of California residents have been displaced and hundreds have lost their homes due to a recent severe wildfire outbreak related to human-caused climate change. Video source: State of Emergency Declared.)

Perhaps the worst thing of all about these globally mounting tragedies is the fact that these increasing instances of extreme, climate change driven weather, were preventable. Now we are forced to live with the damage, danger, and tragic loss of lives and homes we’ve already locked in. Now we are forced to hope that wiser leaders than the ones we’ve had thus far will work as hard as possible to limit the degree of terrible harm that is all too certainly on the way.

622 Comments

climatehawk1

Wharf Rat

Last week, in the refugee article, Rat said he was an over-crowded lifeboat lib, and asked who was gonna take refugees from the west coast. My governor, as usual, is a week behind him. That’s why Rat always votes for Jerry. He doesn’t like pols who get out there ahead of him.

Meanwhile my own computer is in storage and I have only 1 to 2 hours a day on the library computer to look up and post things. Now if I lived near you (or even in your house! hahaha) and were on your payroll I can take up your slack when you need a break.

Leland Palmer

There was smoke in the air, in Santa Rosa, northern California, over the weekend. My wife and I were both hoarse, and the sunlight had that characteristic orange color associated with smoke.

The news coverage of these fires seems spotty and inadequate. I found out about the extent of the fires by smelling the smoke. There also seems to be a taboo about talking about the fires at work, and especially mentioning that they could be linked to climate change.

I live in Kansas, 1,400 miles form the nearest blaze. Our skies here have been noticeably hazy most days with smoke from Alaska, Canada and the western U.S. since late last May. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. And yet, the main topic of conversation around here is pro sports. Most people don’t know or care about these fires at all.

James Burton

Climate is a system of variables, the climate responds to each. What makes be red with rage is those who refused to acknowledge that burning fossil fuels and releasing C02 into the atmosphere ,and short circuiting the natural Carbon Cycle, can not effect climate. If climate responds to all natural variables, how can it NOT respond to a man made variable. i.e. Massive carbon dump from fossil fuels! It’s as if a constantly changing climate can happen naturally, but NOT unnaturally! Humans act a busy bees digging up fossil carbon that earth put away for balance, and now we blow it into the atmosphere, and conservative Americans say “it changes all the time, our fossil fuel burning can have nothing to do with it!”

Loni

Having been sequestered in my house for the entire month of August due to the smoke that was far too thick to work in, with the closest fire being just over the ridge about a mile away, yet having to stay close in case of an evacuation order which would mean moving animals, I’ll take exception to the quote from Gov. Brown. We are not at war with Nature, we have LOST the war against Nature. What we are seeing now, are the consequences of that loss.

We can no longer spit in the eye Nature, but must come to terms with our hubris, and take our humble place at the table with our fellow inhabitants of this world……..if it isn’t too late for that as well.

Yes, we are on the losing end of a war with our star. The fires are yet another example of too much heat from the sun exploding on the surface of our planet.

3.5 billion years ago, earth’s initial cellular life began a process of ameliorating the energy of the sun toward an equilibrium best-suited for life to thrive and evolve. The reason why humans exist is because life inherently collaborates with it’s star, through the carbon cycle, etc. It’s time now for a planetary awakening to this stellar collaboration. Spaceship earth is clearly in code red.

Eric Thurston

Maria

First, Loni, it’s great to hear that you’re hanging in there—what a tough season.

I wholeheartedly agree with you re: Gov Brown’s framing of us at war with Nature. PS: I like him alot. There’s something about that view that makes me bristle–I recently saw it said by someone else.

It conjures up images/thoughts/views that Nature is the enemy, and I’m concerned that policy will emanate from this framework. “How do we tame this beast? When the q, we here all know is, how do, we, as the species that created this unprecedented degradation and violent insult to Nature, tame ourselves?

Maria

Caroline

From Robert’s latest post above:
“It’s an egregious human toll.”
I would add—- egregious nonhuman toll as well. Not enough (if at all)coverage in media about all the wildlife and habitat that is being destroyed due to the wildfires. California ecosystems are in a death spiral which would include marine life in the Pacific.
As Robert states above, “There are harsh consequences to dumping 11 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each and every year.”

Maria

Leaders of Los Angeles, Beijing and more than two dozen other Chinese and American municipalities will announce sweeping climate change commitments today as they prepare for a landmark U.N. deal in December.

The promises of 11 Chinese cities to peak greenhouse gas emissions, some by the end of this decade, will eliminate 1.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, according to the White House. That’s about the amount of carbon pollution Japan or Brazil produces each year.

Meanwhile, American cities are vowing a range of actions—from eliminating coal-fired power in Los Angeles by 2025 to reducing emissions 25 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade and 80 percent by midcentury in Boston.

White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the United States and China are taking a leadership role ahead of global negotiations in Paris.

And…………..

President Xi visits next week. High point in pre-climate talks?

Xi will visit Seattle on Sept. 22 before arriving in Washington, D.C., to meet with Obama. Though the visit comes at a time of tension over cyber spying, several observers called climate change a likely high point in the U.S.-China discussions. Even without major new national-level pledges—which several sources said are unlikely—the meeting could produce momentum for Paris.

“The visit will reinforce President Obama’s and President Xi’s commitment to reach a strong climate agreement in Paris and to implement the climate mitigation targets they announced last year,” said U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern in a statement to ClimateWire.””””

PlazaRed

Thanks for that Maria.
Every little reduction of CO2, or anything will help of course but it also makes me wonder how much the increased incidence of uncontrolled fires is also increasing the CO2 along with other toxic gases that’s are released by fires.
Today I was passing some fields where the wheat had been harvested and the sky was almost back with choking smoke from fires started in the fields by the farmers. Soon they will be burning thousands of tones of olive branches from the pruning’s which are stacked up ready to be set fire too as well.
Makes me wonder what all the regulations really mean when there are “acceptable” agricultural fires all over the place.

Maria

That’s a great question, PR. Perhaps Robert or DT who follow these phenomena more closely can give us some insight. I did some digging and although some quantification estimates have been made, it seems that apart from the pollution, it’s tricky to model and calculate how much the smoke is contributing to actual warming. Some of the particles in smoke reflect light and others absorb it…here’s a piece from Scientific American that touches upon this point. There’s also the issue of how much acreage can be lost before those missing trees are no longer there to be serve as carbon sinks—for at least the short/medium term until regrowth begins in earnest.

The pollution is no doubt an issue with all that wheat and tons of olive branches? My sense is that governments around the world have let the farmers do what what they do with little enforcement of laws even if they’re on the books? I don’t have data to back this up but I’ll do more digging.

“””””””Biomass burning is really complicated,” said Allen Robinson, Lane professor in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. There are many different types of fuels, Robinson said, from ponderosa pine trees to peat, and “they burn in a very poorly controlled manner, so it’s difficult to get your arms around the problem.”

New research published by Robinson and others yesterday in the journal Nature Geoscience tries to give climate modelers a better idea of what smoke does when it enters the atmosphere. It suggests that although it’s not on the same level as fossil fuel emissions, smoke could be worsening climate change more than previously thought.

Sorting out the color of smoke
When smoke enters the atmosphere, its particles react to sunlight in different ways. One kind of smoke particle—what is usually called soot—is dark and absorbs sunlight, meaning it warms the atmosphere. Other particles, called organic carbon aerosols, are made up of tens of thousands of different molecules that have both warming and cooling effects—some absorb sunlight, some reflect sunlight, but the net effect is hard to determine.

To make climate models more workable, scientists assumed that organic carbon aerosols were generally lighter in color, with an overall cooling effect. Today, many climate change projections rely on the idea that the respective warming and cooling properties of soot and organic carbon aerosols cancel each other out, meaning smoke’s impact on the climate isn’t that significant.

But through a series of experiments at the U.S. Forest Service’s Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Mont., Robinson and his colleagues think this assumption might have to change.

Setting a series of different fuels on fire, they captured the smoke in a large, baglike “smog chamber.” They then analyzed the smoke and found that within the realm of organic carbon aerosols, particles called brown carbon, which absorb sunlight and warm the atmosphere, play an important role.

“If you add brown carbon into the picture, it pushes biomass burning clearly into the warming category,” Robinson said.

This finding hasn’t yet been applied to advanced climate change models, but the researchers ran a back-of-the-envelope calculation and found that forest fires or fires purposely set to clear land could well be joining fossil fuels emissions in playing a significant role in warming the planet.

Another of the report’s authors, Manvendra Dubey, senior climate scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, added that climate-warming brown and black carbon particles are found in smoke caused by hot, intensely burning flames—the kind of blazes that are starting to erupt more often.

“With climate change, some models indicate that fires will become hotter and more intense,” Dubey said. “If you have hotter fires, then the potential to have more black and brown carbon increases.”””””

“”””Study results published today in the journal Nature suggest that wildfires can have a huge impact on the amount of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Specifically, scientists found that fires in Indonesia during 1997 spewed the same amount of carbon into the air as is typically removed annually by the entire planet’s biosphere.
Susan E. Page of the University of Leicester and her colleagues used satellite images of a 2.5-million-hectare region of Borneo taken before and after the fires to assess their effects. The team found that 32 percent of the overall area had burned and that most of the land affected was comprised of peat bogs. Because peatland is so effective at storing terrestrial carbon, the fire’s pattern had a significant effect on the global carbon budget. (The image above was taken on September 27, 1997 and shows smoke blanketing Lake Toba, Indonesia.) By extrapolating their findings to the country as a whole, the scientists determined that between 0.8 billion and 2.6 billion tons of carbon was released into the atmosphere by the fires. That amount is equivalent to 13 to 40 percent of the annual emissions from burning fossil fuels, making the fires significant contributors to the largest jump in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since recordkeeping began in 1957. As David Schimel and David Baker of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., point out in an accompanying commentary, “catastrophic events affecting small areas can evidently have a huge impact on the global carbon balance.”

labmonkey2

We got 0.78″ in just 2 hours here in San Diego east county – Santee Lakes Station about a mile from my house – with more on the way later today. Also remnants of Linda. Didn’t cause anything like the mess in Utah, but we did have water curb-to-curb.http://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:92071.1.99999?sp=KCASANTE6

rustj2015

Jay M

The “Valley” fire was in the highlands to the west of the Central Valley, near to Clear Lake which is a fairly large drainage. The takeaway I had was that this thing went to 40,000 acres in about 1 day and a bit over 60,000 day two. Sorry for the antiquated American nomenclature for area. Having spread out and weather conditions changing it doesn’t seem as ferocious, i.e. can’t revisit the burned over area. These areas are in fire ecology, but extensive habitation creates a big human vibe.

Greg

“Most fires grow in a particular direction, funneled by local geography or pushed by the wind, as is the case in Southern California when the Santa Ana winds push fires to the west. The Valley Fire was unusual in that it appeared to spread in every direction simultaneously, growing so large so quickly that it generated its own weather system, with wind blowing outward from the center of the fire. Frequent spotting compounded the inferno, complicating evacuations and forcing some to flee through the flames.”

Apneaman

Hot air melting the Arctic
Around 700 new ‘methane holes’ found in the Arctic shelf by Russian scientists show how fast these emissions are heating up the region. Given the scale of hot air emissions, it is likely the permafrost has been severely degraded, and the thaw irreversible.

Colorado Bob

In 2014, an international research team led by Semiletov set sail to the Arctic Ocean on the Oden icebreaker science vessel. The researchers were the first to closely examine the waters of the outer West Arctic continental shelf at depths below 50 meters, and it turned out that carbon emissions in the shelf zone are much more intense than expected. Up to several hundred grams of methane per square meter are emitted daily, which shows that the underwater Arctic permafrost has been degrading severely. About 700 such “methane holes,” each up to a kilometer in diameter, have been found in the shelf.

Leland Palmer

The people who think they can retreat north to Canada or Alaska or Siberia to escape the effects of climate change better stock up on the mosquito nets, protective suits, and mosquito repellent, it looks like.

Every time one of these shocking ecological effects show up, it is both obvious in retrospect and surprising.

Can you imagine being kept hostage in a cabin for months by swarms of millions of hungry mosquitoes, facing the choice of starving or going outside to get food and get sucked dry?

Leland Palmer

12volt dan

On a hopeful note and a little off topic. Activist Dutch lawyer says climate change lawsuit could work in Canada. As a Canadian I’ve had to deal with Harper’s attacks on science and environment for too long. with any luck he’ll be gone in October and if not? drag his policies into court I say

Leland Palmer

Oh, that’s good. 🙂 Good catch. Holding the host governments liable for protecting their citizens is a good start.

But we also need a legal mechanism for holding the fossil fuel corporations liable for climate damages. That’s where the real source of the problem resides – the fossil fuel corporations and their super rich shareholders.

Colorado Bob

A Deep Dive into What Exxon Knew About Global Warming and When (1978) it Knew It

The article is built around documents from various archives and interviews with former employees. A companion video report by the Frontline television team tells the story in the voices of former company scientists.

Maria

Colorado Bob

Discovery of a highly efficient catalyst eases way to hydrogen economy

Summary:
Hydrogen could be the ideal fuel: Whether used to make electricity in a fuel cell or burned to make heat, the only byproduct is water; there is no climate-altering carbon dioxide. Like gasoline, hydrogen could also be used to store energy. Scientists now report a hydrogen-making catalyst containing phosphorus and sulfur — both common elements — and cobalt, a metal that is 1,000 times cheaper than platinum.

Colorado Bob

Walter Vetter of the University of Hohenheim and colleagues Venessa Gall and Karl Skimisson recently analyzed the bodies of four polar bears that swam, in an extremely malnourished state, from East Greenland to Iceland.

Vetter and his team found that the bears were so thin, their fat reserves had completely redistributed, going to sensitive vital organs such as the brain, kidneys and liver, in a last ditch stage to keep the animals alive. Their findings are reported in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Colorado Bob

Assam can recover from devastating floods—if the government gets its act together

Heavy flooding has affected more than a million people in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, with 45 dead and more than 200,000 in relief camps. And yet there is still very little coverage of the disaster in the international media—perhaps not surprising when you consider even most Indians aren’t paying attention.

But they should—and so should you. The fact a region that is flooded regularly should be so unprepared for the latest downpour is scandalous, as is the shortsighted or uncaring government response.

The floods have also affected local wildlife, with the Kaziranga National Park—home to two-thirds of the world’s Indian rhinos—reporting the electrocution of elephants fleeing from the water, as well as the death of at least three rhinos.

The floods come amid reports of increasing illegal immigration from Bangladesh and poor working conditions on local tea plantations, while armed conflicts between separatist groups and state security forces make the situation in the region even more unstable.

The Tarim basin in Xinjiang, China is a valley the size of Venezuela; bigger than California, New Mexico and Florida put together. On the surface it is home to Taklimakan, China’s biggest desert, but deep beneath lies a hidden ‘ocean’ that is thought to contain up to ten times more water than all the Great Lakes combined, storing more carbon than all the plants on the planet put together. While more water may sound like a good thing, researchers believe that if this carbon were to escape into the atmosphere, we would be in serious, serious trouble.

Maria

Yesterday, he issued an executive order instructing federal agencies to use behavioral science when developing programs to address rising temperatures and other policies. That’s the stuff of sociologists, psychologists and behavioral economists.

The administration suggests that behavioral cues, like comparing your energy use with a neighbor, can be used to increase participation in energy efficiency and other federal goals. The White House created a group last year to experiment with strategies to change behavior. It’s called the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, and it’s testing methods that might get people to act differently.

One is a pop-up computer window that urges people to save paper by printing on both sides. The experiment resulted in a 5.8 percent increase in double-sided printing, a potentially significant reduction in the 18 billion pages printed annually by federal workers.

– The root of this ‘behavior’ problem confronting us is that of the average fossil fuel polluter.
A lack of morality is coupled with a total disregard of self preservation.
There is near total disconnect with the reality of fossil fuel combustion and its absolute lethal consequences.
– We burn FF to dry our hair, to mow our unsustainable lawns, to fabricate, transport and freeze/heat obesity snacks. We burn diesel to shred our paper histories. We use huge V-8 gasoline engines to clean our carpets.
– We permit gas guzzling ‘muscle’ cars, trucks, motorcycles to recreate or endanger, as they dominate our communities and our landscapes.
– This disconnect behavior is rampant in our culture. Very few take responsibility for their own emissions — or that of their neighbor’s, or their communities.
– “Stand your ground” – Hell!
– Stand your air — your atmosphere. Defend it from yourself, and from your neighbor. Until we do that we are nothing. And nothing is what we will become.

labmonkey2

Related to this topic, there is a physiologist (Lise Van Susteren) doing some great research along this line as more people are directly impacted by CC.
—
“We spend vast amounts of time and personal energy trying to calculate the most urgent threats posed by climate change. Washington, D.C. psychiatrist and climate activist Lise Van Susteren, however, says the most insidious danger may already be upon us. She’s not talking about heat, drought, floods, severe storms, or rising seas. She’s focused on the psychological risks posed by global warming.
Van Susteren has co-authored a report on the psychological effects of climate change that predicts Americans will suffer “depressive and anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, substance abuse, suicides, and widespread outbreaks of violence,” in the face of rising temperatures, extreme weather, and scarce resources. Van Susteren and her co-author Kevin Coyle write that counselors and first responders “are not even close to being prepared to handle the scale and intensity of impacts that will arise from the harsher conditions and disasters that global warming will unleash.”
—http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/16/3701936/brain-on-climate-change/

Deeper in the article it references a rally during the Pope visit in DC. Should be an interesting event.

And as an aside – anyone taking bets on whether CNN will talk about or question the GOP debaterers on CC tonite?

Maria

LM, I am just seeing this post. Thanks so much. I’ll dig into it tomorrow. So many unintended consequences—yet to be revealed.

I had to change the station when the R candidates dissed George Schultz re: climate change. No emotional attachment to him but it shows how far off and out of touch they choose to stay! “humbly disagree with one of our patriarchs/forebears?” “Nope, we’re going with the money dealers on this one, ole guy.”

I have a further suggestion to combat paper waste and the resultant AGW: in its publications, the Federal Government can eliminate those stupid papaers bearing the message, “This page was intentionally left blank.”

Maria

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is more than just a fluffy conservation icon and a beloved media darling. It is also, according to new research, the protector of dozens of other unique Chinese species.

No, the panda itself doesn’t actually defend other wildlife, but it helps to save them all the same by serving as what’s known as an “umbrella species.” In other words, efforts to preserve habitats for the giant panda also protect many other mammals, birds and amphibians that live only alongside pandas, in the same areas and regions.

Conservationists have expressed this umbrella species theory for years but a paper published today in Biological Conservation proves it. The research looks at China’s endemic wildlife—species that exist nowhere else on Earth—and found that 70 percent of the country’s forest mammals, 70 percent of forest birds and 31 percent of forest amphibians all live within the panda’s geographic range and the nature reserves set aside to protect them. All told, 96 percent of this range overlaps with important conservation areas for other endemic forest species. “I was very pleasantly surprised by how well the panda does as an umbrella species,” says Stuart Pimm, the paper’s senior author and Doris Duke Professor of Conservation at Duke University. “The mountains of southwest China are a biodiversity hotspot. There are a lot of species that are protected by the panda’s range.”

Eric Thurston

There are similar situations in the US regarding species such as the spotted owl and the snail darter. Where I live in Oregon, the spotted owl is used as ‘leverage’ to protect land that, in reality, should be protected from exploitation no matter what species inhabit it. An analogy might be the story of the gangster Al Capone who the FBI knew for a certainty was responsible for numerous murders, but were unable to get strong enough evidence to convict him on any of the crimes. So they eventually got him on tax-evasion charges and put him in the slammer where he belonged. We need to convict the bad guys and prevent them from destroying our world using any ‘legitimate’ means.

WWF says we risk losing species critical to human food security unless action is taken to halt overfishing and other threats to marine life

Tuna and mackerel populations have suffered a “catastrophic” decline of nearly three quarters in the last 40 years, according to new research.

WWF and the Zoological Society of London found that numbers of the scombridae family of fish, which also includes bonito, fell by 74% between 1970 and 2012, outstripping a decline of 49% for 1,234 ocean species over the same period.

The conservation charity warned that we face losing species critical to human food security, unless drastic action is taken to halt overfishing and other threats to marine life.

Louise Heaps, chief advisor on marine policy at WWF UK, said: “This is catastrophic. We are destroying vital food sources, and the ecology of our oceans.”

…Pollution, including plastic detritus which can build up in the digestive systems of fish; the loss of key habitats such as coastal mangrove swamps; and climate change are also taking a heavy toll, with the oceans becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide we are pouring into the atmosphere.

“I am terrified about acidification,” Heaps told the Guardian. “That situation is looking very bleak. We were taught in the 1980s that the solution to pollution is dilution, but that suggests the oceans have an infinite capacity to absorb our pollution. That is not true, and we have reached the capacity now.

Architecture
Architecture and design blog
Inside the London megaport you didn’t know existed

London Gateway was built by Dubai, is twice the size of the City of London, is run by robots, has the world’s largest cranes – and it’s where everything you buy will soon come from. London’s docks are back in business

…Running almost 3km along the Thames estuary is a £1.5bn new megaport that has literally redrawn the coastline of Essex, and wants to make equally radical shifts to the UK’s consumer supply chain.

Apneaman

What better indicator do we need than this monster this to show there is no real effort to stop the cancer? It’s on the wrong side of the the Barrier, so good luck with that. The monuments of the emirate of Dubai are so fitting of our final futile gestures.

Maria

Says MIT president in front of announcement re: their plans/initiatives ahead of Paris:

“We have many levers as an institution that we can pull on,” he says. “We can launch a Manhattan Project for climate change, if we wanted.”

He received a letter signed by Hansen, Chomsky, etc. this week urging MIT to divest from FF.

Ahead of MIT Climate Change Plan, Activists Appeal One More Time

With the fall semester officially underway, environmental activists have their eyes set on MIT.

In the coming weeks, university president Rafael Reif is poised to announce a comprehensive plan for how MIT will address the growing threats posed by climate change.

In a final attempt to tip the scales against dirty energy, a group of scholars, scientists, and activists delivered a letter to Reif on Wednesday morning, urging him to commit MIT to “selling its stock in fossil fuel companies.” The letter, whose signatories include actor Mark Ruffalo, scholar Noam Chomsky, author Junot Díaz, and climatologist Jim Hansen, among more than two dozen others, says the largest obstacle to solving the climate crisis is the lack of political will.

In June, a climate change committee appointed by Reif delivered a sweeping report in which three quarters of the members supported divesting from coal and tar sands, among several other recommendations. The report was open for comment during the summer, and top administrators are due to release a detailed strategy sometime this semester.

Wednesday’s letter reminds the institution that some of the energy and extraction companies in its investment portfolio have directly funded bogus studies that were intended to discredit the work of MIT’s preeminent researchers. These sins against the scientific method resonate deeply with many on campus, according to Geoffrey Supran, a PhD candidate and organizer with Fossil Free MIT.

“There’s literally no one at MIT, from the first-day freshman to senior administrators, that’s comfortable with MIT supporting companies that are funding climate change denial,” he says. “I know scientists personally who’ve received hate mail for their role in warning the world about this burgeoning crisis.”

It’s unclear exactly when MIT will announce its plan—a spokesperson did not respond to an email request for an updated timeline. Whenever the strategy is released, Supran hopes to see Reif and colleagues go wide in their approach, blending divestment with new educational approaches and intensive, high-impact research efforts.

“We have many levers as an institution that we can pull on,” he says. “We can launch a Manhattan Project for climate change, if we wanted.”

Apneaman

Manhattan Project. A project named after a city whose sole purpose was to build some weapons so horrible that they could destroy somebody else’s cities and all the people in them – instantaneously. Anything to keep the consumer paradise going a while longer by applying more of the same mentality that got us here. Tragic.

Maria

Lake algae puts Country Club homeowners on edge
azdailysun.com/news/local/lake-algae

… At one point in late August, the green mat stretched about 40 feet across the lake’s northern alcove. The stench, which was described by one homeowner as similar to raw sewage or overused fertilizer, made him and his partner reconsider hosting a summer birthday event for fear that the smell would force everyone inside.

“The smell would knock you down,”

The algae feeds on nutrients in the lake, their photosynthesis spurred by ultraviolet rays that filter through the water. Their processes deplete oxygen in the water, eventually making an environment dangerous to fish.

It was primarily a subpar aeration system in the lake and the sudden change from a cooler spring to a hot summer that likely spurred the tremendous algae growth this year…

Carl Clark holds a handful of algae from the surface of Lake Elaine behind his Country Club home Monday morning. Recent algae blooms on the lake have turned its surface emerald green. Lake managers say unusual circumstances caused an explosion in the algae growth this year, forcing them to play catch-up.

– You couldn’t ask for a more graphic and visual dye marker for a super abundance atmospheric and environmental nitrogen fallout deposition.
Anyone having trouble visualizing, or denying, ‘greenhouse gases’ should have an easy time with this stuff.
OUT

LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Air contaminated with pollutants such as ozone and tiny particles could cause the premature death of about 6.6 million people a year by 2050 if nothing is done to improve air quality, scientists warned on Wednesday.

In a study published in the journal Nature, they found that outdoor air pollution already kills about 3.3 million people a year worldwide. The majority of those deaths are in Asia where residential energy emissions, such as those from heating and cooking, have a major impact.

And that toll could double over the next 35 years, the researchers warned, unless clean-up measures are taken.

Caroline

I applaud Romm’s articles but can’t imagine the rationale Climate Progress uses for allowing deniers/trolls and spammers on their reply threads. Moderating this pathological NON science out of there would allow healthy discourse based on facts (operative word: facts). It used to be worthwhile to read the comment section (that’s where I first discovered you C.B.!) But now I rarely go there. It’s absurd and VERY counterproductive.

Colorado Bob

Clever girl. I made the transit as well , they traded tweets and likes, for God knows what.
I’ve been at this sometime now. As tine drags on, the deniers are getting more rabid. They used to point to “burn barrels” near airports recording stations. And pulled out their denier protractors to “prove” it.

Colorado Bob

HANOVER, N.H. – Warming temperatures are causing Arctic mosquitoes to grow faster and emerge earlier, significantly boosting their population and threatening the caribou they feast on, a Dartmouth College study finds.

The study predicts the mosquitoes’ probability of surviving and emerging as adults will increase by more than 50 percent if Arctic temperatures rise 2 °C. The findings are important because changes in the timing and intensity of their emergence affect their role as swarming pests of people and wildlife, as pollinators of tundra plants and as food for other species, including Arctic and migratory birds.http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/dc-amt090915.php

Ouse M.D.

Why in the heck is the baseline lifted to +0,49 C pre- industrial?
I guess someone in the corporate government figured out moving baselines wouldn’t get the public too much excited about actual figures.

Mblanc

Maria

SANTIAGO, Chile — A powerful magnitude-8.3 earthquake hit off Chile’s northern coast Wednesday night, causing buildings to sway in Santiago and other cities and sending people running into the streets.

At least three aftershocks above magnitude-6 and other strong shakes rattled the region as tsunami alarms sounded in the port of Valparaiso in the first major quake since a powerful quake and tsunami killed hundreds in 2010 and leveled part of a southern Chilean city.

Officials ordered people to evacuate low-lying areas along the 2,400 miles of Chile’s Pacific shore, from Puerto Aysen in the south to Arica in the north. Cars streamed inland carrying people to higher ground.

Tom

Arctic research ship probes frigid depths and 4th-lowest sea ice extent on record

[begins]

Through Sept. 11 of this year, the Arctic — which serves a crucial role as the Northern Hemisphere’s refrigerator — lost an area of sea ice nearly equal to the states of Texas, California, Montana and New Mexico combined. This led to the fourth-lowest sea ice extent on record since satellite data began in 1979, continuing the long-term decline in summertime ice cover throughout the Arctic.

[further down]

The research mission, known as “Arctic Mix,” is being led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and University of Washington’s Applied Physics Lab. So far, scientists have been surprised by the strength of ocean mixing they have observed in ice-free areas of the Beaufort Sea.

The ship is sailing through waters that scientists at the NSIDC called “a striking feature” of this melt season, with large regions of water with less than 70% ice cover. This is unusual for the Beaufort Sea, where multi-year ice used to remain in relative abundance through each melt season.

“Our instruments are seeing billows of turbulence that look just like a wave breaking on the beach, but much larger,” said Jennifer MacKinnon, chief scientist aboard the Sikuliaq, in a press release sent from the ship.

“As a result, heat is being mixed up towards the surface, and the remaining ice, at a remarkable rate,” she said.

[toward the end]

“One hypothesis for a rapidly-changing Arctic is increasing open water allows storms to mix this deeper ocean heat upward through the generation of undersea beams of energy called ‘internal waves’, in turn melting more ice,” Alford said in a statement.

“The marked energetic mixing we are seeing here at the heart of the Arctic ice-melt zone may prove key in understanding a potential new climate feedback,” Alford said.

Abel Adamski

“Politicians must act to cap global warming when they meet at a United Nations summit at the end of the year as the financial and humanitarian consequences of natural catastrophes become ever clearer, reinsurers meeting at an industry conference said.

The $600 billion reinsurance industry helps insurance companies pay damage claims from hurricanes, floods or earthquakes and can help people and companies get back on their feet after a disaster.

The UN’s climate boss warned this week that national promises to cut emissions so far would cap warming at an unacceptably high level, heightening concerns in the insurance industry about politicians’ lack of resolve.

“Definitely we expect political courage to move in a direction that shows responsibility towards future generations and a certain interest in defending the sustainability of this planet,” Swiss Re’s Chief Executive, Michel Lies, told a news conference.

Swiss Re data shows natural disasters caused an average $180 billion in economic damage per year over the last decade, of which 70 percent was uninsured.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said big natural catastrophes can also lead to cuts in sovereign credit ratings – making it more expensive for governments to borrow money – with Latin America and the Caribbean most at risk.

These conclusions should help concentrate minds at the climate talks starting in Paris on Nov. 30, reinsurers said.

“What we can bring to the table is a credible price tag for the decisions that are taken or not taken, making sure everybody understands that in the short term you may not take a decision but you will definitely pay a price in the long term,” Lies said.”

Maria

Aside/OT—the Spanish media are using the term “damnificados” to describe the number of wounded. It’s a common word for this condition. Yet, I’ve always had trouble with it because of how we use “damned” in the English speaking world.

NOAA awards $2.1 million to improve observation, forecasting, and mitigation of harmful algal blooms and hypoxia

September 17, 2015

NOAA announced today 12 new research grants totalling nearly $2.1 million that will go to organizations from around the country seeking to address harmful algal blooms (HABs).
… Hypoxia, or low oxygen, can occur naturally but is often caused by poor water quality from human activities, such as excessive nitrogen or phosphorus pollution…

Maria

DT: I happened upon this piece re: car emissions fueling desert fires because of the type of nitrogen they emit that allows for non-native grasses to thrive—the author is a member of a book club I joined. It seems the older members know what she does for a living but she’s not inclined to boast. She’s seems like a wonderful person. I sent her a note and her response was quite modest.

“””In California, weedy, non-native grasses are edging out native plants in desert areas such as Joshua Tree National Park, and NOx is likely to blame.

“The native plants in the desert were not adapted to have that extra nitrogen, so they don’t really grow all that much better, whereas these exotic grasses have evolved to make use of that nitrogen,” he said.

The grasses are highly flammable, unlike the bare rock, soil and islands of shrubs that used to predominate, Davidson said. As a result, “an ecosystem that once hardly ever had a fire in it now has fire more routinely.””””

– This is unnatural growth where there should not be growth.
And nearby it is crowding out natural growth that should be there.
It’s absurd on all counts.
Evidence like this should be used as a dye marker for anthropogenic nitrogen contamination. The atmosphere did not suddenly become a N factory and produce this fallout — but fossil fuel combustion is rife with N.

Maria

DT, And without people like you and your peers pointing this out, people like myself just see these weeds as weeds that need to be removed but hardly question the why….”we’ll always have weeds.” thanks again…I pass your and others info right along to my address book..

Maria

WEST PALM BEACH, FL—Admitting it has had its eye on the property for quite some time, the Atlantic Ocean confirmed Monday that it was looking forward to moving into a beautiful beachfront mansion in the near future. “For the longest time it seemed like this place was completely out of reach for me, but I’ve come a long way in the past few years, and now it’s looking more and more like a real possibility,” said the body of water, which confided that, after having admired the building’s impressive exterior and grounds for so long, it was thrilled at the prospect of finally going inside and exploring all eight bedrooms and 7,500 square feet of living area. “I’m not quite ready yet, but in a couple years or so, I can definitely see myself in there, making the place completely my own. And the little beachside community that the house is located in is just so cute, too—I can’t wait to go through and visit all the shops and restaurants.” The ocean noted, however, that it might make a few cosmetic changes to the mansion once it moves in, including gutting the lower floor and taking out a few walls.

redskylite

The Arctic is rapidly transitioning toward a seasonal sea ice-free state, perhaps one of the most apparent examples of climate change in the world. This dramatic change has numerous consequences, including a large increase in air temperatures, which in turn may affect terrestrial methane emissions. Nonetheless, terrestrial and marine environments are seldom jointly analyzed. By comparing satellite observations of Arctic sea ice concentrations to methane emissions simulated by three process-based biogeochemical models, this study shows that rising wetland methane emissions are associated with sea ice retreat. Our analyses indicate that simulated high-latitude emissions for 2005–2010 were, on average, 1.7 Tg CH4 yr−1 higher compared to 1981–1990 due to a sea ice-induced, autumn-focused, warming. Since these results suggest a continued rise in methane emissions with future sea ice decline, observation programs need to include measurements during the autumn to further investigate the impact of this spatial connection on terrestrial methane emissions.

Dave Person

Hi,
It is nice to see Dave McGuire in that list of coauthors. Dave helped me get up to speed on GIS, spatial statistics, and landscape ecology during my time at University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a very fine ecologist studying carbon fluxes from Arctic landscapes.

Maria

Dave Person

Hi Maria,
I am a wildlife ecologist specializing in predator-prey systems. I worked for >20 years on wolves and deer in Southeast Alaska. My primary interest in landscape ecology derived from my need to examine how widespread clearcut logging in the Tongass National Forest was changing the predator-prey ecological communities that included wolves, bears, deer, humans, and their habitats. It demanded a systems approach and ecologists like Dave McGuire had a great influence on me. While getting my PhD at University of Alaska Fairbanks, I spent a great deal of time in Dave’s spatial ecology lab but I also got to know many researchers trying to puzzle out the myriad of short- and long-term effects of climate warming on Arctic ecosystems. I am also a statistician and mathematical modeler, and my work involved collecting empirical data on my study system and then using those data to build and parameterize models to project how the system will change as more hectares are logged. Currently, one of my predator-prey system models is being used by the USFWS to help them make a determination to list wolves in SE Alaska as threatened under the ESA. After getting my degree, I worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for 15 years continuing my wolf and deer research. However, under the Murkowski, Palin, and Parnell administrations, Alaska became so radically pro development regardless of environmental cost that they started to interfere with my research, which affected the logging industry. Consequently, I left and moved to Vermont where I am semi-retired but do consulting work for the Vermont Division of Fish and Wildlife. Currently, I am helping them with a black bear research project that examines the effects of the construction of wind turbines on the use by bears of important ridge top stands of beech (they eat beech nuts). Also I am helping them with data analysis for a project examining hair loss from moose owing to tick infestations owing to a warming climate. Maria, if you do a internet search for my name and “Alexander Archipelago wolf”, you will find quite a bit about my work. Thanks for asking.

Maria

Dave, thanks for your reply. Bravo—I did google the Alexander Archipelago wolf and your name came up immediately. It looks like you have been a champion and still are. I saw the document you submitted re: Big Thorne)….Thank you so much—on behalf of countless people and wildlife. Your “growing up” during this time when the effects of climate change, are being “lived through, I imagine, is a rich story—waiting to be told. What a beautiful animal. I didn’t know of the Alexander Archipelago wolf. Stunningly beautiful. Please feel free to keep us updated on this issue.

Maria

PS: Dave. I am planning a trip to New Zealand for this upcoming North American winter..Initially, I will be staying with a friend who lives in the Cambridge area. Just this w/e I was doing research and learned about Sanctuary Mountain and it’s “pest proof” fence. What’s your view about this kind of project? Will man indeed be able to restore this area to its ancient roots?

Dave Person

Hi Maria,
New Zealand has a lot of problems with introduced and invasive species. Islands are particularly difficult conservation problems because of their isolation and restricted area even at the scale of New Zealand. The reserve to which you linked may be successful preserving the native flora, fauna, and ecological communities from introduced species, particularly predators. Fencing is very expensive and you must maintain it forever. Many predators are very adept at finding holes and entrance ways. The most important thing however, is if the fenced in area is of sufficient scale to accommodate the natural disturbance regime. What I mean is that if the natural disturbance is small scale and fine grained such as wind blowing down small patches of forest, which then regenerate as small patches within a fairly static matrix of older forest, a small reserve may be able to maintain the ecological integrity of the ecosystem over the long term. In contrast, if the disturbance regime is larger in scale such as fire, the ecological integrity of the area depends on maintaining a huge matrix of burned and unburned patches. There has to be enough area such that the matrix remains intact despite burned lands regenerating and unburned patches eventually burning. In that kind of situation, reserves must be huge to maintain ecological integrity and it is unlikely that any organization could afford to fence the area in to exclude invasive predators.

Maria

Dave thanks again for this thought out post. Much appreciated. I’ll be sure to ask them how it is that they deal with the issues you speak of. Re: NZ and pests. I’m just recalling that about 8 years ago when I moved back to the Northeast and was looking for uber warm socks(!), I went to an NZ merino wool apparel site….it’s there that I learned about the brushtail possum and how it was a serious problem because NZ doesn’t have a natural predator for it…..Non profits and the gvt got involved to reduce its numbers—some selling its wool to help fund their efforts.

Vic

Maria

Vic, I had no idea so many illegal burns happen there.. This was in my twitter feed.

Indonesia arrests seven company executives for illegal forest fires

Suspects included a senior executive from Bumi Mekar Hijau, a unit of Singapore-based Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), which is also Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper producer.

The national impetus includes deploying more police to help with firefighting and handling probes against culprits, and increasing cloud-seeding sorties to douse the blazes, especially those burning on dry peatlands.

These carbon-rich peatlands produce the thick haze that has blanketed many parts of Indonesia, as well as neighbours Malaysia and Singapore in recent weeks, bringing the air quality down to unhealthy and sometimes hazardous levels.

rustj2015

EPA Proposes First-ever Protections to Reduce Methane Pollution
“The oil and gas industry is wasting millions of tons of methane gas and leaking toxic chemicals into the air as it drills and transports oil and gas. The proposed standard begins to address this critical problem by targeting pollution from new sources, and lays the groundwork for essential regulation of existing sources.”

“Climatic extremes cause significant damage to the environment and society, and can cause even more damage when multiple extremes occur simultaneously. This study shows that although there is no significant trend in meteorological drought, the concurrence of meteorological droughts and heatwaves shows statistically significant increases across the United States. We show that the tail of the distribution of concurrent drought and heatwave conditions has shifted toward more frequent and extreme concurrent extremes. Our study outlines a statistical approach for investigating continuous change in the cumulative distribution functions of climatic extremes.”

Colorado Bob

The drought in Queensland has made grass so scarce that ranchers are felling trees. Not just any tree. Their tractors take down mulgas, a type of acacia found in the Australian outback, spreading the foliage on the ground for cows to graze on. The mulga’s leaves are soft and easy to digest. But sometimes the cows don’t have that luxury. To make sure the herds eat and keep their weight up, the ranchers have also set up blocks of minerals for the animals to lick. The chemicals are nutritious and act as an appetite stimulant, compelling the cows to feed on available vegetation they would normally not touch—bushes and spiny plants.

…The original version of the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act, passed by the state Senate and backed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), set three goals to be achieved by the year 2030: cut the state’s gasoline consumption by 50 percent, require electric utilities to generate 50 percent of their power from renewables, and make buildings 50 percent more energy efficient. Unfortunately, lawmakers had to drop the gasoline provision,

…California is particularly susceptible to the influence of the oil industry because the state is home to many oil wells and refineries…

. A 2014 report by the ACCE Institute and Common Cause, entitled “Big Oil Floods the Capitol: How California’s Oil Companies Funnel Funds into the Legislature,” spelled out just how much:

Key members of Big Oil are some of the largest corporations in all of California, including Chevron, Exxon, Aera Energy and Occidental Petroleum. And these big corporations spend big time. Over the past 15 years, Big Oil spent a whopping $143.3 million on political candidates and campaigns. That’s nearly $10 million per year. …

And much of the sprawl in California is unplanned, so it’s more difficult to serve with transit than other places that are equally dense but with better planned layouts. In a traditionally planned city, density is highest at the core where the office buildings are concentrated, and it slides downward like a tent from a pole. But in L.A. and San Diego, jobs and housing are more dispersed throughout the region, making it difficult to build a hub-and-spoke subway system that can serve as many people as efficiently as D.C.’s Metro or Chicago’s El.

Portland, Ore., is surprisingly low-density — barely denser than San Diego — but it has a higher share of trips made without a car than both L.A. and San Diego.

rustj2015

It’s crunch time for transportation funding in 2015. Our emails can give Congress the support—and push—that they need to get the job done.
To help you make the greatest impact, we’ve launched a new tool that enables you to rapidly send a customized message to your Members of Congress.

Maria

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday directed Volkswagen to recall nearly a half million cars from the road, saying the German automaker used software intentionally designed to circumvent environmental standards for reducing smog.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued the company a notice of violation and accused the company of breaking the law by installing software known as a “defeat device” in 4-cylinder Volkswagen and Audi vehicles from model years 2009-15. The device is programmed to detect when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and to only turn on full emissions control systems during that testing. Those controls are turned off during normal driving situations, when the vehicles pollute far more heavily than reported by the manufacturer, the E.P.A. said.

And…….

The software was designed to conceal the cars’ emissions of the pollutant nitrogen oxide, which contributes to the creation of ozone and smog. The pollutants are linked to a range of health problems, including asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.

The state of California has issued a separate notice of violation to the company. California, the E.P.A. and the Justice Department are working together on an investigation of the allegations.

The allegations cover roughly 482,000 diesel passenger cars sold in the United States since 2009.

Mblanc

That’s what happens when corporate interests drive policy. The testing system has been obviously rotten for ages, and nothing has been done.

If you look at the VW XL1, it’s clear that if the political will had been there 10 years ago, we could all be buying VWs which would easily do 200 mpg, presumably reducing all emissions by a huge amount (given that the electricity used comes from renewable sources).

But hey, governments aren’t meant to govern any more, emissions testing is clearly best done by the car companies, because that’s what the free market likes, captured regulatory bodies and fraudulent testing.

redskylite

Abel Adamski

Food for thought
a) The diesel models
b) Actually the Bosch electronics that perform this wizardry are also used in Mercs, BMW’s, Audi’s etc etc.
Whether used in the same manner, that should be investigated

Colorado Bob

They also posted the usual world map NOAA does every month, and month after month that cold spot Southeast of Greenland never moves, in fact it looks a bit larger this month.
That thing is really creepy.

Mblanc

It’s really distracting me when I look at the anomaly maps. I guess the folks on the West Coast of the US have been staring at the RRR, in exactly the same way. It’s like a visible sword of Damocles, and it’s not good when it’s pointing straight at you.

How bizarre to possibly freeze, when almost everywhere else is burning up.

Maria

Colorado Bob

There was 5 day sandstorm in the Mideast , , here’s day two, what’s interesting is the wind came from the Northeast, the exact opposite of prevailing winds.
It was the worst sandstorm since the founding of Israel in 1948, then it hailed in the north, and rained like hell Negev Desert.

– Hey Jack Nicholson (Chinatown), you better put a Band-aid on your nose and go see it for yourself.

latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-aqueduct-drought-20150514

L.A. getting no Owens Valley runoff for first time since 1913

For the first time since 1913 — when Department of Water and Power chief architect William Mulholland opened the waterway with the words, “There it is. Take it!” — the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct has stopped carrying Owens Valley runoff to Los Angeles.

As severe drought continues to grip California, the DWP confirmed Thursday that it had dammed the aqueduct at Owens Lake in order to conserve meager Eastern Sierra snow runoff.

“That’s how bad this drought is,” said LADWP Spokeswoman Amanda Parsons. “We’ve never kept the water in the valley before. This is unprecedented.”

Colorado Bob

Colorado Bob

Wednesday morning, journalists at InsideClimate News, a Web site that has won the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on oil spills, published the first installment of a multi-part exposé that will be appearing over the next month. The documents they have compiled and the interviews they have conducted with retired employees and officials show that, as early as 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies) knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously. This did not prevent the company from then spending decades helping to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming.

– Now let’s see — if corporations now have ‘people’ rights, and crimes against humanity and nature have taken place. Is there not a suitable punishment upon their very person-hood for these crimes
Can justice ‘veritas aequitas’ be served here?

-Veritas aequitas is Latin for truth and justice and is a motto that stands for personal honor and truth in actions and justice, regardless of the circumstances.

Colorado Bob

By 1977, an Exxon senior scientist named James Black was, according to his own notes, able to tell the company’s management committee that there was “general scientific agreement” that what was then called the greenhouse effect was most likely caused by man-made CO2; a year later, speaking to an even wider audience inside the company, he said that research indicated that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, we would increase temperatures two to three degrees Celsius. That’s just about where the scientific consensus lies to this day. “Present thinking,” Black wrote in summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

Colorado Bob

Maria

Syd Bridges

Well, that’s a surprise! Yet another leaf out of the Tobacco Liars playbook. IIRC, it was in 1959 that the chief statistician for one of the British tobacco companies confirmed the work of Hill and Doll on smoking and lung cancer and threatened to resign unless they fessed up. Naturally, they let him resign. I quite like the idea that, as corporations are now people, they should be imprisoned and ruinously fined for outrageous mendacity, which causes the deaths of millions, or in Big Oil’s case, the destruction of most of the biosphere.

Wharf Rat

The denial industry has committed crimes against humanity. Punishment needs to go beyond monetary damages, and jail just isn’t satisfying enuf for me, and maybe
for the kids who will grow up in that world. I’d like to see many of the perps spend the rest of their days in stocks, appearing (or re-appearing) for one day in each town in the country. Some small portion of the fines should cover the cost of tomatoes for the crowd.

And back then the news media were telling us that we were falling headlong into a new ice age. And it was not hard to believe them, in fact hard not to believe them, because they interviewed the minority of scientists who hypothesized that, and because Boston and New York Harbors had ice floes in them.

Can we convict ExxonMobil — and the corporate media — of Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes against Nature, and sentence them to corporate death?

I repeat my contribution to the debate on coal b egan recently by the Minerals Council;

During my time at University in UK doing geology in the late 1960’s one of our visiting lecturers during field trips was a guy called Norm Shackleton, a very personable chap that we all became firm friends with. We discussed his research topic which was trying to discover what triggered the fluctuating ice-ages of the past 1 million years. He spent as further decade on this but in 1976 published a ground-breaking paper titled “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages”. Science 194 (4270): 1121–1132. • Hays, J. D.; Imbrie, J.; Shackleton, N. J. (1976).
Having resolved the mechanisms that caused ice-ages (CO2, and O16/18 ratios content in the atmosphere), the authors also realised that we were storing up a real problem for ourselves. In their conclusions they stated;
Future climate.
Having presented evidence that major changes in past climate were associated with variations in the geometry of the earth’s orbit, we should be able to predict the trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends-and not to such anthropogenic effects as those due to the burning of fossil fuels.
This reference to anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels seems almost understated these days but then it was assumed that the overwhelming case made by science would be acted on. This whole question was discussed at undergraduate level earlier in the 1960’s and resolved scientifically in 1976. . And yet still we have this abject nonsense for the Minerals Council.
And now we can add the Name Henry to this abject nonsense. The science has been settled for decades, and Henry’s self-serving argument is complete anti common-sense rubbish”

” rockyrex ohnonotagainagain
18h ago

Very interesting.
‘Back in the day’, my palaeontology lecturer was Russell Coope.
He made a shocking discovery in the 1950s……
“I happened, entirely by accident, to visit a Quaternary gravel pit in which were exposed the spectacular bones of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and bison.
Looking at their sediment matrix I was amazed to find enormous numbers of equally spectacular, if somewhat smaller, insect remains.
I was hooked instantly!
Particularly exciting to me was the fact that these insect fossils showed that Quaternary climates had changed abruptly.
Thus, at times, fully glacial climates gave place to temperate interglacial conditions within the span of one human lifetime.”
This was the first discovery of evidence that the climate can change really quickly.
Russell Coope died in 2011, but gave an interview that year in which he said……

“We are messing with the trigger that causes climate change….the outcome is likely to be ferocious.”

Leland Palmer

Sure, the legal mechanisms to do that exist, I think. One way to do that would be to charge them for climate damages. Since the damage they are doing is many times the benefit from fossil fuel usage, this would bankrupt them. Then, we would have to follow the chain of profit back to the investors that have profited from global warming, and get their money, too.

But these people are immensely powerful, on an international level. Precautions would have to be put in place to prevent capital flight overseas. Chances are, the huge banks like JPMorgan Chase that have profited from fossil fuels, traditionally controlled by the Rockefeller family (just like ExxonMobil) could crash the stock market in retaliation.

I think the President could also declare a state of emergency and just seize their assets. This might be overturned by the courts – the Roberts Supreme Court would likely overturn something like that in a heartbeat.

To limit climate damage, the government could seize the power plants through eminent domain, I think, and then pay the investors for them. We could afford this, their total market value is affordable, I think.

And the Roberts Court might put the schnitz on eminent domain taking of the power plants, too. Looks to me that we might need a Green Fascist or a Communist government. of course that’s a pipe dream, since these same corporations have immense ownership power over the news media.

Maria

Boulder Weekly “Frackademia” Investigation Reveals University of Colorado for Sale to Oil and Gas Industry

Boulder Weekly, a Boulder, Colorado alternative weekly newspaper, has published a 10,000 word ”frackademia” investigation in a special edition of the newspaper.

The long-form investigation by Joel Dyer — based on thousands of documents obtained by Greenpeace USA — exposes the ongoing partnership between the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business and the Common Sense Policy Roundtable (CSPR), the latter an oil and gas industry front group. The investigation reveals connections to Koch Industries, American Petroleum Institute, and Encana, among others.

Syd Bridges

We saw in the financial crises and scandals of the late 1990s and the crash of 2007 just what business schools really teach. The only morality is the bottom line. So why not whore to frackers? They’ve whored to everyone else.

Maria

Now, this is super cool. A long piece in WaPo describing another paper that shows the warming hiatus never happened. Apart from the different statistical models used, they also did a “blind expert test.” Bravo, dear scientists. They told the economists who were asked to look at the data that they were looking at agricultural stats…LOL..

The paper also describes a separate experiment that lead author Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bristol, says is “the most exciting part.” The researchers subjected the idea of a warming pause to something called a blind expert test.

They presented the climate data to a group of 25 professional economists, but told them that the data represented world agricultural output, not temperature. They did this to prevent any personal biases the economists might have, essentially “dressing up the data as something different that doesn’t have any political or emotional connotations,” Lewandowsky says.

They then asked the economists whether a pause in output had occurred in the period after 1998. The experts rejected this idea, and some even agreed that such a statement was “fraudulent.”

Maria

Pertinent to the topic of this post. Re: fires. A team out of UC Davis wants more prescribed burns, restoration of burned areas, etc…at this point current fire suppression is “stealing” money from departments within the US Forest Service that could be used to study fire, and how to suppress future fires.

“What we’ve done over the last 100 years plus with fire suppression in these frequent fire forests and landscapes is dramatically altered them and consequently their behavior,” Franklin said. “We were going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ time one way or another, but climate change of course is almost certainly exacerbating what’s going on.”

labmonkey2

spotted this link on Climatestate to an article in the Guardian on Indonesian executives being locked up for illegal fires (forest clearing) in the region. Setting precedent for our oil execs?

—
Indonesian police arrested seven corporate executives on Wednesday in connection with illegal forest fires across Sumatra and Kalimantan, as part of a wide-ranging effort to stop the haze crisis.

Suspects included a senior executive from Bumi Mekar Hijau, a unit of Singapore-based Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), which is also Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper producer.

The national impetus includes deploying more police to help with firefighting and handling probes against culprits, and increasing cloud-seeding sorties to douse the blazes, especially those burning on dry peatlands.

“raqis of every creed, sect and political philosophy are defying security forces, Daesh and the sweltering heat to protest against poverty, unemployment and a venal political elite, writes Jacky Sutton.

It’s been a long, hot summer in Iraq, and as the Islamic year draws to a close, protesters in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square are preparing for a final mass demonstration on September 18 before Eid and the holy month of Muharram.”
………..
They have already forced drastic political concessions from prime minister Haider al-Abadi, which include a pledge to reform Iraq’s sectarian quota system that is held to be partly responsible for facilitating the rise of Daesh in the Sunni heartlands of the west of the country.

For the last few weeks, Iraqis of every creed, sect and political philosophy have been defying security forces, Daesh and the sweltering heat to take to the streets and protest against rampant corruption and the sclerotic political system imposed by the US-backed coalition in 2003 in the name of democratic change.

Iraqis have endured a decade and more of squandered opportunities, raised and dashed expectations, and the humiliation of seeing their country run by craven politicians answering to paymasters as far apart ideologically as Washington and Tehran – with Ankara, Riyadh and Damascus thrown into the mix for good measure.

They are Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Yazidi, Christian, Turkmen, Shabak – men and women. Iraq’s glorious heterogeneity is out there defying the Daesh narrative of bleak sectarian hegemony and united in anger and frustration against poverty, unemployment and a venal political elite.

Iraq’s second “Arab Spring” started as a reaction to the death of Muntazar al-Hilfi, a young student from Basra who was shot dead in mid-July by security forces at a peaceful demonstration.

The temperatures this year have topped 50 degrees Celsius and, despite billions of dollars being poured into infrastructure over the last 12 years, OPEC’s second biggest oil producer can’t provide the power to keep generators running. When it gets too hot, the government simply calls a holiday and schools and offices shut down

Read the comments and comprehend the rapaciousness and psychopathic obsessive cruelty of those who are distorting reality and funding the Republicans and the Deniers

Abel Adamski

One of the comments
“‘Iraq Reconstruction’ is the greatest fraud in US History.

American authorities have started to investigate, in 2009, the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.

“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in “pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills” to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.

Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown

JAMESTOWN, N.D. (AP) — Corn and soybeans may be good for cattle and humans — but not bees.

The insects prefer plants with lots of pollen and nectar, and in this part of the country it’s become increasingly difficult for them to find what they need to stay healthy.
Advertisement

Good times in agriculture have led farmers to roll land out of conservation programs and into crops. It’s a shifting landscape that can be seen across eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota, and bees are paying the price, Minnesota Public Radio News reported.

The bees are potentially being squeezed out of some of those areas that are being converted from pasture or fallow land or hay land to row crops,” said Matthew Smart, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Kevin Jones

dtlange: N2 is an extremely abundant and stable molecule. It gives our atmosphere necessary mass. Lightning , hot fires, internal combustion and a few bacteria break it down into various ‘NOX’. NO, N2O. Some of this ‘available’ nitrogen is necessary to life on earth. As in the case of everything, however, too much is too much. This is my understanding….. Keep up the good observations of what too much does!

Kevin Jones

“We have only felt the warming of half the greenhouse gasses up there.”
James Hansen, recently quoted in TruthOut. This strikes me as not only new, but supporting the reading of many of us. And, of course, means Goodbye 2C…… Thanks, Exxon. You who knew you would drown NYC….. as early as 1977. Can any candidate, or their AG spell T R E A S O N ? Shouldn’t any Republican used car dealer in low lying Staten Island be interested?

Syd Bridges

I have long thought that this is the case, Kevin. After all, what is the equilibrium time for a sudden jump in the Earth’s CO2 from say, 310 ppm, which I suspect it was when I was born in 1950, to 400 ppm, which it is now? I would guess it is of the order of several decades at least. So if we had stopped in 1988, I think we would still have ended up with 1 deg C, perhaps in 20 years time. Now, even if we stopped tomorrow, we probably have a future with at least 2 deg C. That would give a sensitivity of about 4 deg C per CO2 doubling, which is by no means at the top of the range. We can thank Exxon-Mobil and their ilk for the second degree and, no doubt, more to come after.

But my country, the UK, has had a poor summer and was, with western Russia, one of the two areas mentioned by NOAA as being colder than average in August. This is connected to the cold spot south of Greenland. Clearly, in the eyes of David “empty suit” Cameron, this can have nothing to do with melting of the GIS, and he can frack us up the Wazoo. I’m not sure that “frack” is quite the right word, but it’s fairly close.

Kevin Jones

Syd Bridges: Really appreciate your thoughts. Last week, away from my collection of books, papers & internet, I was musing upon some remembered data: CO2 20,000 YBP. (years before [pre-industrial] present) 180 ppm. 150 years ago: 280 ppm. Antarctic ice cores reveal a 9C local temperature rise, estimated to be a 4-5C global average rise. Plus some 400 feet (120 meters) sea level rise. 180 to 280 is not a doubling. Also AVERAGE CO2 for the past 10 or so glaciations/inter-glacials has been 220. We are now at 400ppm, not counting the other culprits, CH4, N2O, halocarbons, O3, and of course increased highly variable in time & space H2O in its’ gas phase. With these we are now approaching 500 ppm CO2 equivalence. There remains the ‘fly in the ointment’ of cooling aerosols which accordint to Hansen still have large error bars…. I am Nervous….. p.s. I also was born smack dab in the middle of that terrific century: 1950. According to my ‘backdating’ of Keeling’s Curve we were at 310 1/2 ppm! ‘:)’

The California Report
Hundreds of Millions in Drought Relief Failing to Reach Many Californians

The next time you bring home a case of those little 16-ounce bottles of water, imagine living out of them: pouring a little out every time you wash a dish and dumping them into buckets to shower or flush the toilet.

That’s what Maria Medina’s family has done since their well went dry 18 months ago.

“I use just a little bit of water,” Medina explains in Spanish as she trickles water over a dirty plate. “It takes about half of one of these bottles to wash a single dish. I have to use enough water to get the soap off.”

Medina, her husband and two children live in Okieville, a cluster of ramshackle houses and trailer homes in rural Tulare County. Originally settled by Dust Bowl migrants, the unincorporated community is now home to mostly Mexican farmworkers and their families. Because of the drought, many of them have seen their wells slow to a trickle — or go completely dry.

“A year and a half and no water. It’s really hard,” sighs Medina. “Okieville used to be such a pretty place. I had grass. Now I just have a poor dog chained up to a dead tree. The situation just feels so impossible.”

Twenty-five years ago, the Clean Air Act turned down the exhaust fumes coming from south of the border.

The sweeping amendments passed in 1990 to the American legislation sought to address acid rain, ozone depletion and toxic air emissions resulting from industry, primarily those burning fossil fuels.

And it was largely successful; acid rain-causing emissions have been reduced by upwards of 85 per cent in the United States, Eddie Halfyard, a research scientist at the University of Windsor, said Wednesday.

wili

If anyone has access to this article and has the mathematics chops to evaluate their statistics, I would sure appreciate knowing what you think of their use of ‘p values.’ Are they playing fast and loose with them, essentially cherry picking what constitutes ‘statistically significant’ to come to the conclusion they intend (as a mathematician friend of mine claims). I’d love a second opinion. The question at hand is whether the drought that contributed to the Syrian conflict had GW ‘fingerprints’ on it. Thanks ahead of time.

rustj2015

We need people to join us on the 25 [September 25] not so much to support us but to make a strong statement to FERC, and all those who will learn of our action, about the need for FERC to heed our demand: No New Permits for Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.

The responses of deniers there appear to follow conditions and environments carefully presented in a recent essay by Henry Giroux, “Donald Trump and the Ghosts of Totalitarianism”.

This is a indication by Giroux of what the most powerful, the “official” deniers have done:

“As Richard Hofstadter, Noam Chomsky, and Susan Jacoby have made clear ignorance is not simply about the absence of knowledge, it is a kind of ideological sandstorm in which reason gives way to emotion, and a willful stupidity spreads through the culture as part of a political project that both infantilizes and depoliticizes the general public.”

– Put under the heading of: ‘Particulate fallout and deposition from all aerosol sources with a focus on fossil fuel and traffic dust sources’. For weird and powerful and underappreciated chemical reactions take place on all biota exposed to the above.

‘ California wildfires threaten to make local wine ‘unpalatable’

Multibillion-dollar industry at risk as state grapples with tens of thousands of acres of fire whose smoke could ‘infuse’ grape skin

…Concern in Napa is focused on how the grapes interact with the billows of smoke from the massive Rocky fire in neighboring Lake County.

… Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Food provides a warning: it previously investigated the effect smoke has on grape and wine production after the country was hit with large wildfires in 2003 near Canberra.

It was not positive news for the industry. “Wines made from grapes exposed to smoke during sensitive growth stages can exhibit aromas and flavours resembling smoked meat, disinfectant, leather, salami and ashtrays,” said a report. It noted that when “unfavourable smoke characteristics are detected by consumers at high concentrations”, the wines could be “unpalatable”.

Maria

I listened to the Union of Concerned Scientists webinar(posted upthread). I payed most attention to Christiana Figueres.

My overall sense is that she was quite self-restrained, trying to point out the positive developments of what we now know will be disappointing targets by the major countries.

Based on those targets: 5 Gigatons of CO2 by 2030 will be “removed” from the atmosphere vs. BAU.

15 Gigatons by 2030 would be needed to “get us on the pathway to 2C.”

Emphasized changes we need for C02 will happen over decades—ouch. Again, she did not sound pleased. Restrained is the only word that comes to mind.

She also described how “non-state actors” are and will continue to be essential drivers of changes—i.e: cities, states, provinces, business, insurance companies—“out of self interest” and “city leaders who have already implemented changes are enthusiastic because they are seeing the positive effects close up”. Serving as models for other “non-state actors.”

What she describes as a major challenge for the Dec. meeting is acquiring the funding that developing countries will need—they are being asked to increase economic growth while keeping their carbon footprint in check. “This is the first time in history that this is being asked of humans. These countries will be a test case/laboratory for the rest of the world.”

Fossil fuel companies? It’s her opinion that they are at a fork in the road. A period of self-reflection. Do they want to continue being part of the problem? Or do they want to become part of the solution?

She was quite enthusiastic and heartened about the convergence of what she described as “3 layers of the imperative coming together and aligning.” The moral(Pope and other faith traditions)+ scientists+ economic interests.

[CC redux]: “… It’s that weak offshore flow that we get with the intense high pressure,” Benjamin said. “It’s suppressing the marine level, so we aren’t getting the onshore cooling effect.”
…Gilroy and Mountain View, Benjamin said, where temperatures were forecast to be 105 degrees and 99, respectively.

In Santa Cruz, the temperature was expected to reach 98 degrees, five off the record-high mark set in 1939. It was expected to be slightly cooler in San Francisco, where the forecast high of 93 was four degrees off the mark also set in 1939.

The temperature was forecast to reach 96 degrees in San Jose, while Oakland was expected to reach 95 degrees. Further inland, Livermore was expected to see 103 degrees.

CARSON CITY — Water, the lack of it and how the driest state in the nation can best stretch every last drop will be the focus of a three-day drought summit that convenes Monday in Carson City.

It’s the penultimate event before a panel convened by Gov. Brian Sandoval meets Sept. 28 to narrow down the voluminous testimony gathered over the past several months and identify priorities and recommendations to be included in a report due Nov. 1.

The alarming phenomenon of the death of two dozen whales that washed up on the shores of British Colombia and Alaska can now be traced to toxic algae. Subsequent studies showed that the Pacific Ocean has a patch of water that is warmer than normal which helped the toxic algae flourish and bloom.

A University of British Colombia professor, Andres Trites said that these types of algae contained a neurotoxin that was earlier responsible for poisoning small fish. These small fishes are typically food for the whales. Data showed that since May 2015, 30 sea creatures, including 11 fin whales, 1 gray whale, 14 humpbacks, and 4 unidentified cetaceans have been found dead near Alaska’s shores. In British Colombia alone, 4 humpback whales were found dead since August.

One of the dead Whales in the gulf of Alaska area. Scientists have discovered that the deaths are due to the toxic algae.

However, I would add the societal norms and values of the ‘modern’ cultures that nourished the current destruction of the climate — and the geopolitical conquests via holocaust of the earlier times. Both have more in common than most of us would like to consider.

One book in particular that I recommend is The Hitler Salute: On the Meaning of a Gesture by Tilman Allert.
It is more than the ‘gesture’ but all behind it — what it allows, or promises vs what it forbids.
Think: advertising, disengagement, avoidance of personal responsibility — and more.
“We do it all for you”. “Total instant gratification — NOW”. “Road rage and traffic/air pollution deaths”.

A thread I got from it is the impact of a culture that had much distrust for the ‘present’ — which post WW I Germany had.
A consumer culture like ours is dissatisfied with the present — and demands more, better, tastier, shinier, and quick, quick, quick.

The same with FF motorcar use — and the millions who use them to be somewhere where they are not — day or night. With total, or near total, disregard for the consequences for their community. This is socially acceptable, I might add.

The Hitler Salute: On the Meaning of a Gesture

Sometimes the smallest detail reveals the most about a culture. In The Hitler Salute, sociologist Tilman Allert uses the Nazi transformation of a simple human interaction–the greeting–to show how a shared gesture can usher in the conformity of an entire society. Made compulsory in 1933, the Hitler slaute developed into a daily reflex in a matter of months, and became the norm in schools, at work, among friends, and even at home. Adults denounced neighbors who refused to raise their arms, and children were given tiny Hitler dolls with movable right arms so they could practice the salute. And, of course, each use the greeting invested Hitler and his regime with a divine aura.

The first examination of a phenomenon whose significance has long been underestimated, The Hitler Salute offers new insight into how the Third Reich’s rituals of consent paved the way for the wholesale erosion of social morality.
###

Maria

DT—reading these posts re: Hitler and that era that you’ve been posting recently—my memory was tapped about the religious group, “The Family,” who hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast. I read the Harper’s Magazine article by Jeff Sharlet back in 2008. The story didn’t go very far, unfortunately. He describes how the leadership applauds, uses as examples, people like Hitler, Osama Bin Laden while teaching for the US politicians and other people that they teach/mentor re: leadership skills. Spine-tingling since a who’s who of our politicians have been involved with them for decades…

Colorado Bob

DANBURY — World-renowned primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall delved into topics from chimpanzees to climate change during a wide-ranging lecture Saturday at Western Connecticut State University.

Some of the loudest applause came when she jabbed the audience about deniers of manmade global warming.

“I’m not sure if there was a climate-change denier in this room,” Goodall said to laughter. “I doubt you would stand up and say so. I don’t suppose Donald Trump is in here, or Sarah Palin?”

But she struck a more serious tone in talking about preserving earth’s resources.

“Even the brightest chimpanzee pales in significance to the creature that has designed a rocket that went all the way up to Mars,” she said. “From it crept a little robot and that little robot went crawling along the surface of the red planet, taking photographs for us to see.

“Isn’t it peculiar, that the most intellectual creature to ever walk planet earth is destroying its only home? It’s pretty clear from those pictures from Mars that it is not a hospitable environment. I don’t want to go to Mars, and I don’t image any of you do, either. We’ve got Planet Earth, and Planet Earth has finite resources. We are using them as though they will go on forever, and they won’t.”

Colorado Bob

– Montana’s disappearing glaciers vs corporate oil & gas leverage on places of higher(?) learning: (Donations like this have been a corrupting influence on colleges and universities for a very long time.)

Oil field services company donates $1 million in software to Montana Tech

September 02, 2015 2:44 pm

The Montana Tech Geophysical Engineering Department has received a donation of oil and gas software — valued at $1 million — from Schlumberger, the world’s largest oil field services company, according to a news release from Tech.

The software is in addition to other Schlumberger software that Tech has a license for use on campus.

Meeting Aug. 31, one day prior to the annual meeting of Montana Petroleum Association, Crowley Fleck PLLP held a seven-hour seminar focused on areas relating to oil, gas and mining law.

Uriah Price, an Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Department associate, provided the more than 135 attendees with updates on case law from Montana and North Dakota pertaining to mineral and surface ownership, including pooling interests, royalties and probate. He serves on the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation’s Young Professionals Committee, and works in the Billings office, where his practice encompasses multiple areas of energy and natural resources law.

Price delved into river issues related to navigable and non-navigable waterways, providing legal background and explanations on state and federal classification of waterways, particularly, the Yellowstone River. He also gave an update on the latest changes to flaring regulations passed by the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) aimed at dramatically curbing flared gas from oil wells in the Bakken.

Colorado Bob

Well Mr Scribbler, it looks like your blog has become quite the ‘news service’ via contributions. Would be interested to know your webstats now! (lifeisnotanerror)
Amen.
It’s cracker jack research team , and I am proud of everyone who adds to it. It’s funny how good your dog looks went you keep all the fleas off it.

Colorado Bob

Warm temperatures have dominated much of the U.S. so far in September and many cities are on track to see a record warm September.

If you have been enjoying the summer-like conditions then you may be in luck as much of the contiguous U.S. may have to wait a little longer than usual for fall to set in as there are indications this trend of above-average temperatures will persist into at least the beginning of October.

rustj2015

Colorado Bob

The news tonight said 9 million acres have burned. , that’s a new record. New fires in California ………..

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. — A new wildfire in Northern California has killed one person and destroyed or damaged 10 homes in Monterey County, a week after two other blazes killed five people and destroyed at least 1,400 homes, fire officials said Sunday.

The blaze burning about 2 miles north of the community of Jamesburg quickly grew to 1,200-acres after starting Saturday afternoon, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

Colorado Bob

rustj2015

“In a discovery that inspires adjectives from staid scientists such as surprising, disconcerting, and alarming, it has just been determined that warming of drylands, which comprise 40 percent of Earth’s land surface, is now expected to initiate enormous amounts of carbon release. Such landscapes are normally protected by what is known as “biocrust”, described as “a combination of mosses and lichens that are in effect glued together by photosynthetic microorganisms called cyanobacteria, which provide structure to the landscape through the carbohydrate molecules they secrete.” On top of this structure grow lichens and mosses.

“Damage from humans who trample this delicate covering underfoot and crush it driving off-road vehicles has long been a concern, but this research indicates global warming will add to dust storms, erosion, and yet another amplifying feedback to global warming.”
from Wit’s End NJ 9/20/15

This structure, in turn, allows the more complex organisms like mosses and lichens to grow — and when it’s all assembled, the biocrust then holds the soil in place and prevents dust storms and erosion. “Things would blow away without biocrust,” says Ferrenberg.

Colorado Bob

Colorado Bob

Maria

A thread, high up in the comments. with Dave Person and his work with the Alexander Archipelago wolf and now with bears in Vermont—I’m reminded of learning about this bear and wolf in a Finland forest that are best buddies…

Finnish Photographer Documents The Unusual Friendship Between A Bear And A Wolf

Maria

Dave Person

Hi Maria,
This is a wonderful story and I cannot claim to have any explanation for the behavior. Who knows, these kind of circumstances may happen a lot in nature and we never see them. I do notice that the female wolf seems to be initiating most of the interactions. Her behavior appears to be solicitous of the bear. Did she bring food to the bear? Anyway, the bear appears to be young and it will be interesting to see how things develop when he reaches sexual maturity. He may be less tolerant of the wolf.

Maria

Great catch, Dave–indeed, she is the one creating opportunity for them to interact….how poignant it will be when their brother/sister type relationship has to? transitions to each parting ways and creating families of their own. Who knows, maybe their families will understand and become part of this mysterious relationship. How easy/dangerous it is to anthropomorphize. I will send a note to the photographer and see if he keeps tabs on them.

Maria

redskylite

Having listened to a few presidential hopefuls trying the old Divide and Rule gambit, especially on fossil fuels, implying that foreign imports were from nations who hate the U.S. (would that be Canada ?, who have never forgiven the U.S for that South Park episode, I wonder) I’m glad to see some international cooperation among space agencies. At least NASA and ESA and others have signed up in Mexico. We need to pool as much resource as we can to defeat this peril.

Maria

The Vanishing IslandTaro Island: a sometimes picturesque coral atoll adrift in the ocean at the north-western tip of the Solomon Islands.

Barely a kilometre long and less across and almost none of it more than two metres above sea level, it is barely a smudge on a map. Yet this smudge – with its nearly 600 permanent residents, its hospital, churches (four), school, police station and courthouse – is set to take an unwanted place in history. Though tiny, it is the capital of the province of Choiseul. Soon it may be the first provincial capital in the world to be abandoned due to climate change.

“There’s competition between different disciplines about (whose subject area) will drive the carbon release” as the climate warms, Romanovsky said. Contenders include oceanographers, glaciologists, bog limnologists — and geocryologists, a term sometimes referring to permafrost researchers.

“Everyone thinks that what they are studying is the most important,” said the Russian-born holder of two Ph.Ds. “But probably, everything is a factor.”

“Severe fires are defined as ones that burn to some degree through the organic mat of vegetation that insulates the permafrost below, and the loss of that insulation can cause thawing over time.

In the past, when the climate was cooler, permafrost was more likely to survive the loss of the organic layer, the University of Alaska Fairbanks study found.

“In the 1930s, a high-severity fire would have a big impact on permafrost but a moderate-severity fire would not,” said lead author Dana Brown, a doctoral student at the university. “Today, even a moderate-severity fire would have a big impact. Permafrost has become increasingly vulnerable to the effects of fire due to changes in climate.”

And long, intense fire seasons in Alaska’s boreal forests are increasingly becoming the norm, according to scientific models. “

In the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, the mighty state of Texas was asleep.

The honky-tonks in Austin were shuttered, the air-conditioned office towers of Houston were powered down, and the wind whistled through the dogwood trees and live oaks on the gracious lawns of Preston Hollow.

Out in the desolate flats of West Texas, the same wind was turning hundreds of wind turbines, producing tons of electricity at a time when comparatively little supply was needed.

And then a very strange thing happened: The so-called spot price of electricity in Texas fell toward zero, hit zero, and then went negative for several hours.

Mblanc

Increased greenhouse gas emissions from the release of carbon dioxide and methane contained in the Arctic permafrost could result in $43 trillion in additional economic damage by the end of the next century, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Colorado.

In a letter published today (21 September) in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers have for the first time modelled the economic impact caused by melting permafrost in the Arctic to the end of the twenty-second century, on top of the damage already predicted by climate and economic models.http://phys.org/news/2015-09-emissions-permafrost-trillion.html

– The Guardian 0921
This growing migration crisis is the canary in the mine on climate change

Conflict in the Middle East forces people to flee, but so does drought, destroying crops and livelihoods. We must invest in science for sustainable agriculture.

…One of the drivers of this crisis was a five-year drought – the worst ever recorded in Syria – that began in the 2007-8 cropping season. Farmers lost livestock, crops withered, and children went hungry. Many decided to move to nearby cities, hoping for work but finding instead unhealthy living conditions, a lack of community support and few jobs. During the drought, the UN estimated that levels of youth unemployment in Syria reached as high as 48%.

…Syria and Jordan are predicted to lose 30% of their fertile land to desertification if measures are not urgently taken to combat desertification and land degradation. The Arab region as a whole already has the most significant food deficit in the world.

– For 40, or more, years I had lived among many palm trees in So. Cal., and never, until 2011-2012, years of aerosol soot, fallout did I ever see this part of a palm tree that was not on the tree. It’s beyond absurd.

Re: the above palm tree frond seed pod assembly.
Think of a healthy human female of reproductive age who just had her eggs, ovaries and uterus suddenly detach and fall to the sidewalk.
That, basically, is what took place with this palm.
OUT

Maria

“The volume of waste in landfills, a major source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, was grossly underestimated in the United States in 2012, researchers said Monday.

Some 262 million tons of garbage — more than double the national estimate by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of 122 million tons — was dumped in landfills that year, scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

This suggested that methane emissions from the decomposition of municipal waste at these dumps were also undercounted.”

Dave Person

Hi,
By 2020, all food and organic waste from households in Vermont will be composted. It will be illegal to throw it into landfills. In addition, all potential recyclables will be removed from the waste stream. One of the side effects of the policy is that it is beginning to spawn commercial composting businesses that take the waste for a fee and create a product for sale.

Scientists have developed a comprehensive, open map of the relationships among all known life. The project illustrates how open-science principles and digital technology can bring together information to expand understanding of a complex subject.

Dave Person

Hi David,
Keep in mind, this is the process that created what we all recognize as the Mediterranean shrub and forest ecosystems of southern France, Italy, Greece, etc. Thick ancient forests were cut and destroyed and then fire-maintained shrub forests and grasslands replaced them. We are going to turn much of the west into Greece. The other thing to understand about the article, be very wary of US Forest Service prescriptions for thinning to reduce fuel load. Scientifically, it makes sense but thinning is done by local logging contractors. Often, the Forest Service has to sweeten the economic pot to attract those contractors by offering them old growth or other valuable timber that subsidizes the poor return from thinning contracts. In order to thin, often old existing logging roads have to be repaired and made ready for use and that costs a lot of money. We taxpayers pay for that and selling the valuable timber also subsidizes the costs for the Forest Service. This is similar to Forest Service KV funds for restoring wildlife habitat in logged stands. The level of KV funds allocated to a ranger district is directly proportional to the amount of timber they cut. Therefore, to get more KV funds to restore forest lands, they have to cut more. It is institutional insanity.

Colorado Bob

It’s just a matter of time before Tokyo is struck by the same magnitude of flooding that devastated parts of the northern Kanto region this month, and should the capital remain unprepared it will most likely be “annihilated,” followed by an unprecedented death toll and economic damage, experts warn.

With the effects of global warming becoming increasingly obvious, the climatic conditions that triggered torrential rain in Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures two weeks ago is no longer a rarity, and the odds are “100 percent” that similar downpours will hit Tokyo, says Nobuyuki Tsuchiya, a civil engineering expert and author of the 2014 book “Shuto Suibotsu” (“The Capital Submerged”).

The downpours that led to the Kinugawa River overflowing its banks in Ibaraki were mainly caused by a concentration of thunderclouds that formed a lengthy band of rain, a phenomenon that was also responsible for torrential rain that killed 74 people in the city of Hiroshima in summer 2014.

Although previously considered very rare, the abnormal weather condition is becoming increasingly prevalent due to the growing impact of global warming, Tsuchiya said.

Colorado Bob

“But now, the subways and underground structures have become so developed that there is nothing to absorb the river water before it arrives in Tokyo. . . .The subways would function like water drainage pipes in times of flooding disasters.”

redskylite

Serious and sobering reminders and predictions of the course we are embarked on from Dr J. Hansen and Dr. Makiko Sato (at the Columbia University Earth Institute).

“The exact course of North Atlantic cooling is difficult to predict, because of competition there between amplifying and diminishing feedbacks, as discussed below. Nevertheless, the nature of the prediction is clear: the warming-induced freshwater flux increases ocean stratification, slows North Atlantic Deep Water formation, reduces the strength of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and cools the North Atlantic Ocean. This is an old concept, studied extensively for many years. However, what we are saying is that the system is more sensitive than has been realized and effects are already beginning to occur. ”

Both statements are true, but the amount of rain in a short period of time is the real killer as we all know. 4 inches in a week ain’t a big deal, 4 inches in 45 min you come to Jesus pretty fast.

So much of this reporting never says how much came and how fast it fell. . So we are always left with the same old comment –
“Deforestation and improper construction near riverbeds blamed for increased flooding “

Colorado Bob

“It Felt Like the Apocalypse”: Israel Hit with Extreme and Unusual Weather on Jewish New Year

“It felt like the apocalypse, the rain has been torrential, there were about 10 lightning strikes in seconds, and even with your windshield wipers on high, it was impossible to see anything,” Mark Katz, a National Parks Authority employee, told the Times of Israel.

Since the beginning of September, Israel has experienced a series of extreme weather changes, beginning last week with a sudden sandstorm that blanketed the country in thick yellow dust.

The record setting five-day dust storm was also accompanied by a heat-wave, with new records reached across Israel in temperatures and air pollution.

Mblanc

I’m walking around (in the UK), carrying this huge, huge story in my head, and no-one I know has a clue. It’s a climate bombshell for us.

If this is just the beginning of a bigger trend, this country is going to be affected. Our ‘Storms of my Grandchildren’ test-bed status will presumably be shared with our transatlantic cousins on the east coast of North America.

Maria

Solar Desalination in California. The company will be desalinating irrigation drainage in the Central Valley. The article doesn’t talk about where all that brine will go….What is an appropriate method way to deal with desal brine?

snip

“””Less than one percent of the world’s desalination is powered by renewable energy sources today, but that could all change soon if companies like California-based WaterFX have anything to say about it. Its Aqua4 “concentrated solar still” (CSS) uses a concentrated solar thermal collector to compress heat, create steam and distill water at 30 times the efficiency of natural evaporation. It can produce 65,000 gallons of freshwater per day—and it can desalinate a wide range of water sources, not just seawater.
”
Solar desalination is a technique used to remove salt from water via a specially designed still that uses solar energy to boil seawater and capture the resulting steam, which is in turn cooled and condensed into pristine freshwater. Salt and other impurities are left behind in the still.

Less than one percent of the world’s desalination is powered by renewable energy sources today, but that could all change soon if companies like California-based WaterFX have anything to say about it. Its Aqua4 “concentrated solar still” (CSS) uses a concentrated solar thermal collector to compress heat, create steam and distill water at 30 times the efficiency of natural evaporation. It can produce 65,000 gallons of freshwater per day—and it can desalinate a wide range of water sources, not just seawater.

To wit, the company will start employing solar desalination to treat some 1.6 billion gallons of salt-laden irrigation drainage from California’s drought-stricken, agriculturally-rich Central Valley next year. Crops extract nearly pure water from soil, leaving behind salt and other potentially toxic minerals like selenium that naturally occur in the water. These excess minerals must be drained from the soil, or crop productivity plunges. By treating this drainage, WaterFX can prevent about percent of farmland in California from being retired every year to make room for storage for untreated drainage water.”””

Maria

Thanks Ed. Imagine the marketing campaign-;)
Ps: I saw your comment up thread re: we don’t have decades. I recently learned that the big People’s Climate March was partially subsidized by FF. we know that Paris talks are being partially funded by big oil & major emitters. I’m afraid that unless the grass roots-/-county-to-county and state to state citizens & their leadership take bold action? Decades, I’m afraid. Hope I’m wrong. And that a massive positive feedback loop re: renewals ensues, giving FF & nat’l leadership no choice but to follow.

Crap. Combined with corporate dominance of our “free” news media (including Russia’s) means any such attempts to get Peak FF’s before their natural peaking at least 15 years from now (too many in my opinion) will be met with derision and … get ready now … “ZOMG DOOMER PORN!!!!!!” spoken from every news media mouthpiece.

And the same media will say the American Way of Life (Suburban Utopia and Happy Motoring! [TM]) is still non-negotiable.

And people will fall for it, especially here in the United States, for we are the World’s easiest marks. And that is the reason why our country will do the right thing after trying everything else.

And there’s something like 8,000 GT of Carbon embedded in the permafrost and the sea beds, which are melting or getting ready to melt as we speak. Sam Caranas, not to mention the paleolithic-paleoclimactic record, has demonstrated that rapid uncontrolled releases of Carbon, especially in the form of Methane, are likely to lead to a hot house extinction right quick. But the ice will stick around for a thousand more years or so, which will put a brake on uncontrolled global overheating.

Sum it all up, and we face Near Term Human Extinction, maybe even NTE, (by 3015).

– Off topic but a nice USA history, society, and physics piece regarding nuclear test sites.
I would like to also see something about the mining, and the extraction uranium and other materials. And with Oak Ridge, TN and Hanford, WA as processing sites.

Good visuals here in The Guardian:

The US conducted most of its early nuclear tests in the Pacific, but they became too costly to continue … so in 1950, the US government began to look for a safe place to test nuclear weapons on its mainland

The Nevada Test Site was established a few years after the end of the second world war, against the fear of an all-out nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. As the Cold War took hold, America needed a convenient place to design and build its nuclear arsenal.

From 1951, over four decades, the US government carried out almost a thousand nuclear tests at this test site, earning it the nickname of the “most bombed place on Earth”. Here, they took the crude nuclear weapons that had been dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and honed their destructive power.

johnm33

That North Atlantic cold anomoly may have more than one cause, check out SSS at http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/arctic.html what I see is the less saline water exiting the arctic by Banks island [130W] making its way through NWP into Hudson, Baffin then Labrador, where it’s joined by Greenland run off and the fresher water from melting ice out of Fram strait then you get the turbulent mixing of the southern flow some of which ‘wants’ to be at 130W and the northbound Gulf steam waters. The flow through NWP continued all through the winter. I’m no expert but thats how I see it.

Ouse M.D.

Chris Harris, a former senior nuclear reactor operator for over three decades and currently a nuclear consultant, claims Fukushima is an extinction level event: Containment is a myth, there isn’t any; cold shutdown is a myth; cooling is a myth because there is no way to measure cooling when nobody knows where the nuclear fuel is located; waste processing is a myth; cleanup is a myth because it’s a “waste generation facility” that won’t stop.

Climate scientists are tiring of governance that does not lead to action. But democracy must not be weakened in the fight against global warming, warns Nico Stehr.

There are many threats to democracy in the modern era. Not least is the risk posed by the widespread public feeling that politicians are not listening.

…More surprisingly, a similar impatience with the political elite is now also present in the scientific community. Researchers are increasingly concerned that no one is listening to their diagnosis of the dangers of human-induced climate change and its long-lasting consequences, despite the robust scientific consensus.
… “comfort and ignorance are the biggest flaws of human character. This is a potentially deadly mix”.

Syd Bridges

– And the smoke just lays there — not much air is moving in the region.

On September 18, 2015 the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, with help from a Chinook CH-47 from the California National Guard, did a flyover survey of the burn area around the lower portions of the Valley Fire and Middletown, Calif.

rustj2015

A new expedition to one of the mysterious Siberian giant holes found in recent years has concluded that it is a warning sign of a deadly threat to northern regions as the climate warms.

Scientists from the respected Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics insist the process by which a series of craters formed was caused by the melting of gas hydrates and the emission of methane.

This accumulates in a pingo – a mound of earth-covered ice – which then erupts causing the formation of the strange holes that have appeared on Russia’s Arctic fringe.

A pingo believed to be poised to explode ‘at any moment’ is now being constantly monitored by a Russian space satellite in an attempt to catch the moment when the eruption occurs.

…POTENTIAL HIGH SURF ALONG THE CHUKCHI SEA COAST WEDNESDAY
THROUGH FRIDAY…

A STORM WILL MOVE ACROSS THE NORTHERN CHUKCHI SEA WEDNESDAY AND
THURSDAY. THIS WILL CAUSE STRONG SOUTH WINDS AND HIGH SURF ALONG
THE CHUKCHI SEA COAST FROM KIVALINA TO POINT HOPE FROM WEDNESDAY
AFTERNOON TO THURSDAY NIGHT.

A SECOND STORM WILL MOVE ACROSS THE CHUKCHI SEA ON THURSDAY NIGHT
AND FRIDAY. THIS COULD BRING STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS AND HIGH SURF
TO THE AREA FROM THE BERING STRAIT TO KOTZEBUE ON THURSDAY NIGHT
AND FRIDAY. THIS COULD AFFECT SHISHMAREF…DEERING…AND KOTZEBUE
THURSDAY NIGHT AND FRIDAY. THERE IS STILL A LOT OF UNCERTAINTY
ABOUT THIS SECOND STORM AT THIS TIME…HOWEVER.

“the fact that most big research universities are located in countries with seasons— what’s happening in the tropics has been largely ignored.

We Could Have Discovered Climate Change As Early As the 1940s if We Had Just Looked
…
“Remarkably our research shows that you could already see clear signs of global warming in the tropics by the 1960s but in parts of Australia, South East Asia and Africa it was visible as early as the 1940s,” said lead study author Andrew King in a statement. (That’s decades before the the fore-thinking researchers at Exxon discovered global warming!)

Climate change is hitting high latitude ecosystems the hardest — the Arctic, for instance, is warming twice as fast as the world at large. For that reason — and the fact that most big research universities are located in countries with seasons— what’s happening in the tropics has been largely ignored.

Abel Adamski

While temperature records generally showed pronounced indications of global warming, heavy rainfall events have yet to make their mark. The models showed a general increase in extreme rainfall but the global warming signal was not strong enough yet to rise above the expected natural variation.

“We expect the first heavy precipitation events with a clear global warming signal will appear during winters in Russia, Canada and northern Europe over the next 10-30 years,” said co-author Dr Ed Hawkins from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, UK.

“This is likely to bring pronounced precipitation events on top of the already existing trend towards increasingly wet winters in these regions.”

Not just the tropics, but the Arctic, too. Rachel Carson, in the 1962 edition of her The Sea around Us, noted signs of climactic warming in Greenland in the 1940s including the arrival of warmer-climate plants and birds.

You can probably pick up a copy, new or used, at your local mom-and-pop bookstore. If that fails, there’s always Amazon.com and friends.

The 1962 edition of that book was where I first learned of global warming. I happened to read it in the mid-to-late 70s when we had those back-to-back Arctic Vortex Winters (77-78, 78-79). Back then I figured global warming got cancelled because of the constant MSM harping on “THE NEW ICE AGE!!!”

A few years later when I was in college I read a huge novel about a globally overheated planet called Bellona, IIRC.

More acidic ocean water can upset the balance, as we’ve learned. New research from the University of Washington has found that a more acidic ocean can weaken the outer shell of a slender alga with the whimsical name of the mermaid’s wineglass.

Caroline

From Dahr Jamail’s latest piece on 9/21:
“In the Arctic, things continue to look grim. On September 11, Arctic sea ice dropped to its fourth-lowest level on record, and it could well become even the second-lowest level later this month as the ice continues melting, amid what is now a decades-long ACD-generated decline.”

What’s going on here? On Neven’s site it has been declared that the melt season is over yet it could still become the second lowest record? Thoughts anyone?

Caroline

Thanks Ed and C.Hawk1! Yes, I trust Neven too—-very grateful for all he does. Looks like the summer ice will be going soon . . . very sad (actually that is putting it too mildly) and most people are completely unaware . . . clueless.

redskylite

News from the Himalayas, pollutants that were carelessly released into the air decades ago from far away places , now entering North Indian plains .. . . a new toxic hazard

“Pollutants carried from lands far away and buried for decades under glaciers in the Himalayas are now finding their way into the Ganga and its tributaries, a new study has found. The pollutants are being released as the glaciers are melting faster due to climate change.”

– From story — relevant aerosol pollutants:
“… major contributors” of two classes of pollutants – polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – to the Ganga and its tributaries during the dry season. PCBs are man-made chemicals that were widely used in electrical wires and paint, plastics and rubber products. PAHs occur naturally but are also released into the environment due to burning of coal, coal tar, asphalt, hazardous waste and from vehicle exhausts.

– To my mind, a relatively small portion is from the “Industrial Age” — the rest is from modern consumer and automobile sources.

redskylite

A staggering 70% decline in seabird populations, time to take off the rose-tinted glasses

Plos One Paper: Population Trend of the World’s Monitored Seabirds, 1950-2010

Authors
Michelle Paleczny ,
Edd Hammill ,
Vasiliki Karpouzi,
Daniel Pauly
Abstract
Seabird population changes are good indicators of long-term and large-scale change in marine ecosystems, and important because of their many impacts on marine ecosystems. We assessed the population trend of the world’s monitored seabirds (1950–2010) by compiling a global database of seabird population size records and applying multivariate autoregressive state-space (MARSS) modeling to estimate the overall population trend of the portion of the population with sufficient data (i.e., at least five records). This monitored population represented approximately 19% of the global seabird population. We found the monitored portion of the global seabird population to have declined overall by 69.7% between 1950 and 2010. This declining trend may reflect the global seabird population trend, given the large and apparently representative sample. Furthermore, the largest declines were observed in families containing wide-ranging pelagic species, suggesting that pan-global populations may be more at risk than shorter-ranging coastal populations.

Colorado Bob

Scientists in Siberia are preparing for the formation of a massive new crater, which will be even bigger than an existing one. The researchers believe the sinkhole will be caused by a blast in the permafrost, though they are keeping its location under wraps.

The scientists have located a so-called ‘hillock of swelling,’ which is abnormal in terms of size and form, according to Vladimir Olenchenko, a senior researcher at the Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics in the city of Novosibirsk. He added that the new possible sinkhole is not far from and will be bigger than a massive crater, which was formed last year in Solikamsk.

“We are keeping the coordinates of its location a secret so that this will not lead to a pilgrimage of the scientists and quasi-scientists, as it can explode at anytime,” said Olenchenko.

Syria’s civil war has prompted the first withdrawal of crop seeds from a “doomsday” vault built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global food supplies.

The seeds, including samples of wheat, barley and grasses suited to dry regions, have been requested by researchers in the Middle East to replace a collection in the Syrian city of Aleppo that has been damaged by the war.

“Protecting the world’s biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” said Brian Lainoff, spokesman for the Crop Trust which runs the underground store on a Norwegian island 1300 kilometres from the North Pole.

Greg

Greg

Quote from the Pope at the White House this morning: “it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation. When it comes to the care of our “common home”, we are living at a critical moment of history. We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about “a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change” (Laudato Si’, 13). Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them. Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies. To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.”

‘Here Comes the Sea: The Struggle to Keep the Ocean out of California’s Coastal Aquifers’

Farm districts preserve fresh groundwater with recycled wastewater

“Saltwater intrusion is the biggest untold water story in the world today. It’s a silent problem. It’s easy to ignore politically but it can spoil the water source for future generations.”

–Ron Duncan, interim general manager
Soquel Creek Water District

Saltwater intrusion, the technical name for the problem, occurs when too much groundwater is pumped from coastal aquifers, thereby upsetting the subterranean balance between inland freshwater and the relentless ocean. Water moves through the ground as it does in rivers: from high elevation to low.

Globally, more than 1 billion people rely on coastal aquifers for drinking water and irrigation. In delta megacities and in agrarian capitals the ocean is pushing inland, a result of demands on groundwater that far exceed a sustainable rate of consumption. In Jakarta, Indonesia, a city of 10 million people, wells at least 11 kilometers (7 miles) inland have been contaminated with salt. In Chennai, India, salt water is detected nearly 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the coast.

– Diesel data I kind of new about from a 2013 train trip from CHI to PDX. A knowledgeable passenger told me that Bakken crude was of ‘high’ (volatile and explosive!) grade.
This is also why it so lucrative.

Question
What percentage of a barrel of Bakken oil is gasoline and diesel fuel?
Answer

A modern refinery can make about 95% of a barrel of Bakken crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

In a bid to reduce CO2 emissions in the 90s, Europe backed a major switch from petrol to diesel cars but the result was a rise in deadly air pollution

Volkswagen’s rigging of emissions tests for diesel cars comes after nearly 20 years of the technology being incentivised in Europe in the knowledge that its adoption would reduce global warming emissions but lead to thousands of extra deaths from increased levels of toxic gases.

Diesel was a niche market in Europe until the mid-1990s, making up less than 10% of the car fleet. Diesels produce 15% less CO2 than petrol, but emit four times more nitrogen dioxide pollution (NO2) and 22 times more particulates – the tiny particles that penetrate the lungs, brain and heart.

Mblanc

One aspect of this is the question of how many premature deaths have been caused by the incentives for diesel engines in EU car market, and how many future lives have been saved by the reduction of CO2-induced warming. Future generations don’t really have a lawyer, at least not yet!

Given that CO2 effects are global, whereas the other pollutants are more local, can we say that European lives have been given, to help save lives in the rest of the world.

This is interesting because traditionally, it’s been the other way round!

Mblanc

I have followed this story for a long while, and the blatant effort of the manufacturers (and their political friends), to slow the emergence of the truth on diesel emissions (for commercial gain), is despicable. I read about a 10% decrease in the lung function of children living within 200m of major routes years ago, and where were the politicians demanding action?

You would hope to see corporate manslaughter charges soon, but in the dirty world we live in, it might not happen.

– File under:
Property owners in hurricane zones are not assured that someone will risk their lives to “fight” the hurricane. Why should we expect anyone to “fight” the fires?

The West is on fire – and the US taxpayer is subsidizing it

A number of economic practices and social issues are exacerbating our forest fire problems.

The first is the enlargement of what is known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). More people are building homes in the interface close to the wildlands and forests. Since 1970, there has been a 50% increase in the low-density housing that borders state and federal wildlands. And the majority occurs in areas subject to increasing risk of fire. California has almost five million housing units in the WUI.

…The West is on fire – and the US taxpayer is subsidizing it

The cost of protecting people and property in the WUI is so expensive it has shifted the priorities of the US Forest Service. So much money is spent on protecting property from megafires that programs for preventing wildfires and for protecting habitats and wildlife are much reduced. In 1990, firefighting accounted for only 13% of the US Forest Service budget; now it eats up more than half.

… There are tactical decisions, such as perhaps moving to a hurricane model of disaster relief; that is, tell people to board up and leave rather than assure them that their property will be protected. Property owners in hurricane zones are not assured that someone will risk their lives to “fight” the hurricane. Why should we expect anyone to “fight” the fires?http://theconversation.com/the-west-is-on-fire-and-the-us-taxpayer-is-subsidizing-it-47900

redskylite

Simply put: If we don’t start caring for the Earth so deeply we can feel it, nothing else matters.

That’s the message in a powerful new poem by a New Jersey college student, produced by an Emmy-winning filmmaker. It has a beautiful and heart-rending message. Every world leader should watch it:

The short film was produced in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly in New York—the biggest routine gathering of world leaders each year. This year, there’s extra pressure: The world body is setting a series of ambitious new goals on sustainable development. Negotiations for a first-ever global agreement on climate change are fast approaching. Plus, the Pope is in town.

“MOTHER’S CRY: The Deeply Moving Video on Climate Change that Every World Leader Should See ”

Exclusive: Countries publicly calling for investigations into VW emissions rigging scandal have privately fought to keep loopholes in car tests for carbon emissions
…
Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show the three countries lobbied the European commission to keep loopholes in car tests that would increase real world carbon dioxide emissions by 14% above those claimed.

– But now a legal tag team tussle at the ‘bar’:
– Thanks again Guardian.

Volkswagen hires BP oil spill lawyers to defend emissions cases

Carmaker faces class action suits after admitting 11m of its cars were designed to cheat emissions testing

Volkswagen has hired the US law firm that defended BP after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to help it deal with a growing collection of investigations and law suits over the emissions scandal that has rocked the car maker and dragged in the German government.

The hiring of Kirkland & Ellis emerged as the German government admitted that it already knew about “defeat devices” that can cheat emissions tests.

rustj2015

May be relevant, with the sirocco called rump:
Arendt’s point is that the totalitarian form is still with us because the all too protean origins of totalitarianism are still with us: loneliness as the normal register of social life, the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude, mass poverty and mass homelessness, the routine use of terror as a political instrument, and the ever growing speeds and scales of media, economics, and warfare.
Bill Dixon, Totalitarianism and the Sand Stormhttp://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=12466

Monarch butterfly populations in North America are declining at such an alarming rate that they are already under consideration for the “endangered species” list.

Millions of monarch butterflies arrive in California every spring to feed on milkweed and reproduce.

[Important note: west coast Monarchs also gather and overwinter in reproductive (suspended) diapause at suitable coastal sites. Which are niche sites with functioning and balanced micro-climates — that are vulnerable to human intrusion and climate change.]

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University-led survey of nearly 700 scientists from nonclimate disciplines shows that more than 90 percent believe that average global temperatures are higher than pre-1800s levels and that human activity has significantly contributed to the rise.

September 24, 2015
NASA to fly parallel science campaigns at both poles

For the first time in its seven years of flights, NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of changes in Earth’s polar ice, is conducting overlapping campaigns in Antarctica and the Arctic. Since 2009, IceBridge has studied Antarctic ice conditions each fall, but this year a new field campaign has been added to collect measurements of sea and land ice in the Arctic to provide insight into the impact of the summer melt season.

Colorado Bob

I watched the NOVA program on the “Franklin Expedition” last night. They set sail in 1845 to finish the mapping of the Northwest passage. It was really great TV.

These ships hulls were 8 feet thick with oak and iron plate, in a sandwich.

In the middle of the show , they go to the ice core scientists , it seems Franklin set sail at the beginning of a 30 year period when summer sea ice never really melted in that dense chain of sea and land in Northern Canada.

Colorado Bob

:”Only four cargo vessels traversed the so-called Northeast Passage—a shipping lane across the northern shore of the Eurasian continent, connecting Atlantic to Pacific—in 2010. By 2013 that number had grown to 71.”

rayduray

I watched that show with grim fascination. What bravery those crazy Brits exhibited. Truly only mad dogs and Englishman terrain up there in the Inuit territories. But I do have one question. Since the Koch Brothers took over, why does every PBS “Nova” topic seem two centuries old? I’m looking forward to the Nova treatment of Noah’s Flood. Why stay stuck in the recent past, eh?

Colorado Bob

Speaking as part of a forthcoming Radio 4 documentary series “Climate Change – Are we Feeling Lucky?”, she asserted that the earth had cooled in the last 13 years by 1F. And she said no evidence would persuade her of man-made warming.

She also rejected the theory of evolution. Scientists say her views are “complete nonsense”.

Maria

Volkswagen’s falsification of pollution tests opens the door to a very different car industry.

After going more in depth about the scandal, how Europe/USA have not monitored companies emissions declarations, it finishes with how this scandal may be what opens wider the door to EV, et. al. vehicles.

redskylite

Well we know that several large businesses have been grossly unethical in the past, and V.W have joined the club.

While the V.W diesel emission measurement cheat is disgraceful, at least the company has admitted the deceit, and it has been widely reported by the mainstream press. V.W are firing their high management and changing their structure.

Maria

Point taken, redskylite. I’m still in shock and disappointed. VW is a legendary company. Creator of icons like the bug, the van that are seared into the American cultural history of the 60s/70s. My brother has owned VW for most of his adulthood. Convinced me into going VW with my last purchase in ’10. Not diesel because I needed a wagon and Passat model was not yet there. Well, life is that way. Unexpected at every corner.

– FYI: These ‘iconic’ ( I’ve owned a few in the distant past. And junked the last car I owned way back in 1999.) VW bugs and vans etc have been some of the most horrendously polluting devices ever produced. Everyone should know that. This VW culture is a toxic blight — and something to be ashamed of.
if you doubt this then go find one of them and sit down behind one while the engine operates — breathe the emissions and see for yourself (but beware).
– Info on this is harder to find now that the latest toxic scam is in the news. So here’s a news piece from CSM from Mexico City 1990. (Ps Brazil became a de facto Ruhr Valley for VW, and made, or forged, cast, and machined many of the engine parts for VW at the expense of the rainforests.

VW Beetle Sales Soar in Mexico

POPULAR POLLUTER
By Michael White, Special to The Christian Science Monitor July 17, 1990

‘MEXICO CITY — AIDED by a generous government tax break, the venerable Volkswagen Beetle is riding a new wave of popularity that has made it one of Mexico’s best-selling cars. But ecologists in this smog-shrouded capital say the Beetle’s outdated, air-cooled engine is an environmental hazard and the Bug’s revival marks a setback for efforts to clean the city’s foul air.

However, the Bug’s revival appears to be at odds with government efforts to reduce auto pollutants. Luis Manuel Guerra, an environmental consultant to Mexico City, says the Beetle produces 10 times more carbon monoxide than the newer Volkswagen Rabbit or Nissan Tsuru.

“The [Beetle] engine is the most polluting engine sold in the Americas,” …